Christmas Travels Numero Seis - Shanghai: the easiest way to spend all your money.

Our next day in Shanghai, the last full day we'd have, had been put aside specifically to shop. We had no access to any western shops in Xinjiang, and fairly often Chinese clothes simply don't fit the bill. So we thought we'd take the opportunity to get some clothes to last us through the rest of the year. Liam spent a packet in H & M, which I would have been only too willing to do had they anything I liked; I found one acceptable top. I also bought some jeans in Zara seeing as mine were falling apart at the seams. But they are about a foot too long, because they are made for giant women and I am not of this ilk. The shops were down Huaihai Lu, (Avenue Joffre) and at night everything was lit up and very cosmopolitan. Lovely stuff. However seeing as I couldn't find anything really suitable, my clothes are in an absolute state at the moment! My jacket is pitiable. Maybe someday soon I'll go on a quest to find something wearable in Urumqi...
That evening we had our hearts absolutely set on getting a haircut. Mine was full of split ends and losing its style, and Liam's fringe was by now hanging down his nose! We don't trust Urumqi hairdressers as far as we can throw them. Which is not very far. So we decided to wait until Shanghai to get haircuts, where we thought the hairstylists might be better trained. Plus, we had Vanessa there to help us out with translations for style if we got into linguistic muddles.
Vanessa recommended a salon and we made our way there. She was at work so could only come to meet us partway through the session. I got my hairwashed in a sink, but Liam got the 'dry wash' where they basically wash his hair in the seat using water sprayed from a bottle. They halfheartedly massaged my head when I got my hair washed, but I know that Chinese salons all do head massages if you ask, normally for free, and some do back massages too, for a small charge. It was quite late though and I couldn't be bothered to ask for a proper one. I showed the lovely gay hairdresser (they're all gay men hair stylists here, it's so wonderfully cliche) a photograph of my hair how it had looked when I'd last had it looking styled, and he cut it in a similar way, though the fringe was a little different. Vanessa turned up at this point and helped me ask for a more feathery fringe, thank God! He then blowdried my hair with extreme volume, which I'm not a fan of. Apparently he had told Vanessa (her translation) that my hair was "too sticky to my head". I'm going to assume he meant flat, and not something worse. Charming.
A bald Liam and a voluminous moi went to eat with Vanessa and had some Shanghai style dumplings which were good, before saying our goodbyes and going home to bed.