Don’t eat the live shrimp. Seriously, it’s gross. I don’t care what the nice
Chinaman said, it’s disgusting.
That was the defining moment of a week-long trip to Shanghai that the
Travel Snob recently took with Phil Keoghan, the host of TV’s “The Amazing
Race” to capture warm and fuzzy anecdotes for the book you are reading. Well,
that was the pretense anyway. In actuality it was an elaborate scheme designed
to get me to China for my own personal sabbatical – a Zen-like retreat where I
would become one with the universe (or bar, whichever was closest). I don’t know
what Tom Cruise was thinking, jumping up and down buildings in Shanghai for
Mission Impossible 3 when he could have been enjoying reflexology treatments at
The Portman Ritz-Carlton. Of all people, he most could use a therapeutic foot rub
(or intervention).
The Keoghans could as well (the foot rub, not being institutionalized), and
they too saw into my scheme a chance to get their own vacation without Phil
having to shoot firearms or send bickering lovebirds back home to Schenectady.
Great minds think a lot.
And thank God for it, because this excursion took months of planning and
Secret Service-like advance work. Suddenly, someone who can’t remember to
pay his cable bill is negotiating with the Chinese government and getting visas
processed from a communist country. Really?
That’s what you’ll find yourself asking the minute you drive into Shanghai
and see for yourself the circus town freak show that has become its skyline.
Restraint is obviously not a topic covered in its city code handbook. Its downtown
is like Gotham on crack, with funky Who-ville like buildings that look as if they
were designed by Jean Paul Gautier on an off year. You can’t help but stare in
wonder, feeling as if you’ve just been sucked into a scene from “Blade Runner,”
but thankful the Chinese feel as we do about Sean Young.
We spent considerable time during our time in Shanghai visiting its more
infamous structures, including the Jin Mao Tower, the world’s fourth tallest
building. It was there that Phil’s wife Louise and I bemoaned the travesty of all the
pollution circling the city, then drowned our sorrows in $5 Styrofoam coffee cups
from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Of course no mention of Shanghai would be
complete without the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, a building that single-handedly
transforms the skyline, like if one of Tom Cruise’s Scientology delusions came
true and Xenu flew down and parked his spaceship in the middle of Shanghai to
bring Tom, Katie and Suri back to Planet X.
Co-existing with the futuristic skyline is a surprising sense of history and
culture, highlighted by museums, gardens, temples, shrines, landmarks and
overwhelming humidity. Attractions like the Yuyuan Garden, the Mid-Lake
Teahouse and Bazaar and the Jude Buddha Temple remind you that you’re in
China and not trapped in an Ian Schrager designed nightmare with a giant
deceiving lobby but small bedroom. You can also find great antiques and
souvenirs in a small village called Watertown ZhuJiaJiao, an ancient town on the
outskirts of Shanghai formed 1,700 years, and where many centuries old
buildings still line the riverbanks, housing its residents and small shops selling
rice, clothing and spices.
We stayed during our visit at The Portman Ritz-Carlton, a 45-story, 610-
room hotel/retail/business complex you’d consider big anywhere but Shanghai. I
liken it to a “Party of Five” cast photo, and that adorable Scott Wolf having to
stand on his tippy toes to reach Matthew Fox but barely standing taller than 10-
year-old Lacey Chabert.
The Travel Snob also got a laugh when told the hotel’s Hank Greenberg
Presidential Suite had to be renamed after the AIG chairman was scandalously
forced into early retirement by then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who’s not
entirely unfamiliar with hotel branding himself. In its place is the Andrew Cuomo
Penthouse, which I’m told is gray, dark and depressing, and tells you to eat your
spinach.
Naming rights aside, The Portman Ritz-Carlton attended to our every whim,
from Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku girls awaiting our arrival in the lobby to a dim-sum
cooking class that all but qualified me captain of the Special Olympics, which I
guess is verboten after President Obama’s slip of the tongue. Most fun was a ride
through downtown Shanghai with Phil on one of the hotel’s custom-made 1938
Chang Jiang 750 cc motorbikes, which is the closest I will ever come to feeling like
a red-blooded American male.
While the Travel Snob is happy to take his share of credit for this adventure,
he did have a little help from the Chinese government which generously lent us a
team of tour guides despite threatening to sink our economy and bomb poor
Taiwan, which did nothing wrong and should be left alone. Our Chinese “hosts”
may have been reporting on our every move throughout the week (“The fat one,
he like pizza”), but it’s not like we were photographing state secrets with
microfiche cameras. They couldn’t have been more informative, better groomed,
westernized or courteous. Clearly, there’s something to living in a brutal,
totalitarian government, even if there’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken on every block.
And that I would have totally eaten over Chinese delicacies. The Travel Snob has
the palate of a five year old and can barely stomach Red Lobster, which you’ve
never seen him at, and don’t pretend you have, and so justifiably launched into a
week-long hunger strike that inspired hours of teasing from the Keoghans.
This snowballed into the climax of our trip – the live shrimp incident. If you’ve
never eaten this disgusting, heinous creature consider yourselves lucky. They’re
mean, slimy and they spit at you, kind of like Chris Brown but with less vocal
range. Had Lynndie England used them at Abu Ghraib I’m sure Osama would be
a stain on some Pakistani cave by now and not lounging poolside at the Four
Seasons Sharm El Sheikh.
But Phil decided to make this meal a challenge, and he dared each of us to
swallow one whole. I held out as long as I could, but there’s no resisting “The Phil-
iminator” when he gets that mischievous look in his eye. My manhood is already
suspect, so I wasn’t about to add fuel to the fire by being the only holdout. And so
I ate it, but not before squeezing its life out with the knife.
Rihanna would be so proud.
Chinaman said, it’s disgusting.
That was the defining moment of a week-long trip to Shanghai that the
Travel Snob recently took with Phil Keoghan, the host of TV’s “The Amazing
Race” to capture warm and fuzzy anecdotes for the book you are reading. Well,
that was the pretense anyway. In actuality it was an elaborate scheme designed
to get me to China for my own personal sabbatical – a Zen-like retreat where I
would become one with the universe (or bar, whichever was closest). I don’t know
what Tom Cruise was thinking, jumping up and down buildings in Shanghai for
Mission Impossible 3 when he could have been enjoying reflexology treatments at
The Portman Ritz-Carlton. Of all people, he most could use a therapeutic foot rub
(or intervention).
The Keoghans could as well (the foot rub, not being institutionalized), and
they too saw into my scheme a chance to get their own vacation without Phil
having to shoot firearms or send bickering lovebirds back home to Schenectady.
Great minds think a lot.
And thank God for it, because this excursion took months of planning and
Secret Service-like advance work. Suddenly, someone who can’t remember to
pay his cable bill is negotiating with the Chinese government and getting visas
processed from a communist country. Really?
That’s what you’ll find yourself asking the minute you drive into Shanghai
and see for yourself the circus town freak show that has become its skyline.
Restraint is obviously not a topic covered in its city code handbook. Its downtown
is like Gotham on crack, with funky Who-ville like buildings that look as if they
were designed by Jean Paul Gautier on an off year. You can’t help but stare in
wonder, feeling as if you’ve just been sucked into a scene from “Blade Runner,”
but thankful the Chinese feel as we do about Sean Young.
We spent considerable time during our time in Shanghai visiting its more
infamous structures, including the Jin Mao Tower, the world’s fourth tallest
building. It was there that Phil’s wife Louise and I bemoaned the travesty of all the
pollution circling the city, then drowned our sorrows in $5 Styrofoam coffee cups
from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Of course no mention of Shanghai would be
complete without the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, a building that single-handedly
transforms the skyline, like if one of Tom Cruise’s Scientology delusions came
true and Xenu flew down and parked his spaceship in the middle of Shanghai to
bring Tom, Katie and Suri back to Planet X.
Co-existing with the futuristic skyline is a surprising sense of history and
culture, highlighted by museums, gardens, temples, shrines, landmarks and
overwhelming humidity. Attractions like the Yuyuan Garden, the Mid-Lake
Teahouse and Bazaar and the Jude Buddha Temple remind you that you’re in
China and not trapped in an Ian Schrager designed nightmare with a giant
deceiving lobby but small bedroom. You can also find great antiques and
souvenirs in a small village called Watertown ZhuJiaJiao, an ancient town on the
outskirts of Shanghai formed 1,700 years, and where many centuries old
buildings still line the riverbanks, housing its residents and small shops selling
rice, clothing and spices.
We stayed during our visit at The Portman Ritz-Carlton, a 45-story, 610-
room hotel/retail/business complex you’d consider big anywhere but Shanghai. I
liken it to a “Party of Five” cast photo, and that adorable Scott Wolf having to
stand on his tippy toes to reach Matthew Fox but barely standing taller than 10-
year-old Lacey Chabert.
The Travel Snob also got a laugh when told the hotel’s Hank Greenberg
Presidential Suite had to be renamed after the AIG chairman was scandalously
forced into early retirement by then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who’s not
entirely unfamiliar with hotel branding himself. In its place is the Andrew Cuomo
Penthouse, which I’m told is gray, dark and depressing, and tells you to eat your
spinach.
Naming rights aside, The Portman Ritz-Carlton attended to our every whim,
from Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku girls awaiting our arrival in the lobby to a dim-sum
cooking class that all but qualified me captain of the Special Olympics, which I
guess is verboten after President Obama’s slip of the tongue. Most fun was a ride
through downtown Shanghai with Phil on one of the hotel’s custom-made 1938
Chang Jiang 750 cc motorbikes, which is the closest I will ever come to feeling like
a red-blooded American male.
While the Travel Snob is happy to take his share of credit for this adventure,
he did have a little help from the Chinese government which generously lent us a
team of tour guides despite threatening to sink our economy and bomb poor
Taiwan, which did nothing wrong and should be left alone. Our Chinese “hosts”
may have been reporting on our every move throughout the week (“The fat one,
he like pizza”), but it’s not like we were photographing state secrets with
microfiche cameras. They couldn’t have been more informative, better groomed,
westernized or courteous. Clearly, there’s something to living in a brutal,
totalitarian government, even if there’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken on every block.
And that I would have totally eaten over Chinese delicacies. The Travel Snob has
the palate of a five year old and can barely stomach Red Lobster, which you’ve
never seen him at, and don’t pretend you have, and so justifiably launched into a
week-long hunger strike that inspired hours of teasing from the Keoghans.
This snowballed into the climax of our trip – the live shrimp incident. If you’ve
never eaten this disgusting, heinous creature consider yourselves lucky. They’re
mean, slimy and they spit at you, kind of like Chris Brown but with less vocal
range. Had Lynndie England used them at Abu Ghraib I’m sure Osama would be
a stain on some Pakistani cave by now and not lounging poolside at the Four
Seasons Sharm El Sheikh.
But Phil decided to make this meal a challenge, and he dared each of us to
swallow one whole. I held out as long as I could, but there’s no resisting “The Phil-
iminator” when he gets that mischievous look in his eye. My manhood is already
suspect, so I wasn’t about to add fuel to the fire by being the only holdout. And so
I ate it, but not before squeezing its life out with the knife.
Rihanna would be so proud.
| Shanghai Surprise |
| The Travel Snob (doubling as Watch! editor Jeremy Murphy) takes "The Amazing Race's" Phil Keoghan and his family on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Shanghai |