#Not my first time in London so I will not be seeking out touristy stuff. I might just wander around | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

drinkthehalo · 8 years ago

Text

Guide: How to see Sleep No More in Shanghai

Here's a quick guide for how to get to Shanghai to see Sleep No More.

Feel free to ask additional questions or send corrections if you have any.

How do I get tickets to the show?

The best approach is to get tickets through the Punchdrunk Keyholder program. This will get you VIP entry, which has a shorter queue and enters first.

Click here to become a Keyholder by donating to Punchdrunk.

If you're not a Keyholder, it’s worth considering. Don't you want a holiday card from Punchdrunk every year? ;) They also send occasional surprises related to the shows; this year’s Drowned Man related gift made me cry. At the higher levels, you'll be invited to events in London with the creative team. Keyholder donations help fund inspiring creative educational experiences for children in London; it's worth donating even without the perks.

Do be warned that they have a limited allocation of Keyholder tickets, and may run out of tickets for the dates you seek. Your alternative is to buy through the show website at sleepnomore.cn.

If you need tickets to a sold out show, there are Chinese reselling sites where you may be able to get tickets. You'll probably need to be able to read Chinese and have a Chinese credit card, and you need to be on the lookout for fakes. Consider this as a last resort.

Also keep in mind that the show is currently only selling tickets until end of April 2017. I assume that like Sleep No More NYC and The Drowned Man, it’ll keep extending in small batches, but there’s no guarantee. Don’t book flights until you have confirmed tickets.

What if I have another question about tickets...?

Email the Punchdrunk Keyholder team or the contact email on the China show website. I've gotten quick replies (in English) from both.

How do I get to China?

From the US or UK, you'll need a visa, but before you can apply for a visa, you need to book your flights and hotel.

How do I fly to China?

You’ll probably fly into the main international airport, Shanghai Pudong (PVG). There is also a smaller domestic airport called Shanghai Hongqiao (SHA) which you may fly into if your flight includes a transfer.

From New York, two airlines fly direct: United and China Eastern. (It's 15.5 hours there and 14.5 hours back). Many other airlines fly with transfers.

It's worth checking if you, or friends/family, have spare airline points lying around. You can book United via United (obviously), Air Canada Aeroplan, and ANA. You can book China Eastern via Delta or Air France Flyingblue. You can also book flights with things like Amex points.

Full fare cost varies, but I've seen it as low as $800 round trip from NYC. Don't book a flight until you secure tickets to the show.

From London: Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and China Eastern fly direct, with flight times of 11 hours outbound and 13 hours return. It's possible to get flights for under £500, but dependent on dates, economy returns can be over £1000. Check with @whenwillweawake for more details from a Londoner’s perspective.

The jetlag is unbelievable. I've never experienced anything like it. I was wide awake at 5am every day and could barely keep my eyes open after 10pm. (The opposite of usual.) Look for jet lag remedies and try some before you go.

Where should I stay?

The show is in a neighborhood called Jing'an. It has a lot of shops and restaurants, but not a ton of hotels.

There is a hotel called The Drama, which is associated with the show, and is located next door. I don't think it's opened yet and I don't see any info online about how to book it.

I ended up staying at the Radisson Blu New World by People's Park. (I got a really cheap deal on TripAdvisor.) People's Park is to the east, one metro stop away, about a 25 minute walk to the show or 10 minute cab ride. It's a touristy area with a lot of international hotels. This makes it easy to find ATMs, Starbucks, English-speaking hotel concierges who can call you a taxi, etc.

If I go back, I'll probably try to stay in a less touristy area such as the French Concession, which is south of the McKinnon.

You can check hotel prices & see them on a map using a site like booking.com.

On the plus side, hotel rates in Shanghai are significantly cheaper than in New York or London. There are also very affordable hostels, including some that offer private rooms.

Where exactly is the McKinnon?

It can be difficult to get it to show correctly on a map. The address is 1013 West Beijing Rd. Here’s a map link that should work.

How do I get a visa?

Once you book your airfare and hotel, you can apply for a visa. Make sure your passport has at least eight months remaining - if not, you should renew it first.

For Americans -

The instructions you get from the Chinese embassy are confusing. I followed this other site which was much more clear.

Here is an example of a correctly filled out form, requesting a 10-year unlimited visit visa from the visa office in New York City. (You may as well request a 10-year unlimited visit visa - it doesn't cost anything extra.)

You don't need to use a paid service (ie the link above recommends you use their service) - just take it to the embassy yourself. You'll need to pay $140, I believe they take Mastercard & Visa in addition to cash.

For the photo, a standard passport photo works - just go to Yelp & search for "Passport photo" if you're not sure where to get one. Tons of places take them around the city.

Location to apply for visa:

Passport and Visa Office Chinese Consulate General 520 12th Ave. New York, NY 10036

Hours: 9:00am-2:30pm, Monday to Friday except holidays

For British citizens, it’s also an easy process to get a Chinese visa. You’ll need to have your flights and hotel booked, 6 months left on your passport, a passport photo and a signed declaration form, as well as the completed visa application form.

Click here for details and a step-by-step guide.

The form only allows you to apply for a single or two-trip visa, but multiple entry, two year visas are now being granted by default for those applications following an agreement between the two governments earlier this year. It’ll cost you around £150.

It’s a quick process when done in person, book an appointment online for 6 weeks to 1 month before you’re due to depart, visit the office (which is close to Bank) to hand in the forms, and then your visa (and passport) will be ready to pick up in less than a week.

It’s also possible to apply by post - although I’m not sure of the timings for that.

How do I get around Shanghai?

Taxi drivers don't usually speak English, but if you give them an address in Chinese they'll usually take you there.

I relied on a website called "Smart Shanghai" which is in English but provides addresses in Chinese for taxis.

Here's the Chinese address for the McKinnon Hotel - print this out & bring it with you to show to taxi drivers.

Also bring a printout of your hotel address. You can use it to get from airport to hotel after you arrive, and to get to your hotel at night after the show. (Make sure to wait in the actual taxi queue at the airport - rip off artists will try to steal you out of the queue and lure you into their overpriced cabs.) A taxi from airport to downtown should be under 200 CNY and take around 45 minutes.

In addition to taxis, the Metro is an excellent option. It's cheap, clean, easy to use, and has English everywhere you need it - ticket machines, train announcements, etc. It goes right near the McKinnon, the Nanjing Road West stop on lines 2 and 12. However, it stops running relatively early, just after 10pm, and it's crowded at rush hour.

We generally took cab or metro to the show, and walked back to our hotel at night.

We enjoyed getting around the city by wandering around and walking a lot. Just watch out for mopeds and bikes on the sidewalk. Unlike NYC, moving vehicles apparently have the right-of-way over pedestrians.

How do I pay for things?

Many places (including the McKinnon and its mind-boggling gift shop) don't take international credit cards. We usually used cash.

You can withdraw cash from most ATMs, although some won't work with international banks. We didn't have too much trouble finding ATMs that would work for us.

Call your bank before you go to alert them that you'll be withdrawing cash from China.

What time should I queue?

If you have Keyholder "Fast Pass" VIP entry, 30-40 minutes before the show starts.

If you have regular entry, I'm not sure. The queue looked huge. :(

I don't think the time listed on your ticket matters. They seemed to let people in by order of arrival, as in NYC and London.

Be aware that they mix up the cards. They're still distributed roughly in order of arrival, but 2s are mixed in with Aces, 3s are mixed in with 2s, etc. Even if you are the first person in the queue, you may get a 2.

What else do I need to know about the logistics of the show?

Don't bring your phone in. Check it with the rest of your stuff. This will save you time - if you do bring in your phone, you'll have to lock it in a bag, and queue to unlock it after the show ends.

To avoid the coat check queue, get your stuff immediately after the show ends, then return to the Manderley.

The Manderley closes early - 11pm at the latest, so you'll need alternate plans if you want to stay out late.

It gets very hot inside the show, even in winter. Dress to stay cool.

How do I post my recaps to Tumblr?

Much of the Western Internet is blocked in China, including Tumblr and Facebook.

If you have T-Mobile, you'll have free international data that is unrestricted, although very slow.

Other cell phone plans may also offer international data without restrictions, though you may have to pay extra for it.

If using wifi, you'll need a VPN to connect to most sites you're used to. PM me for VPN recommendations.

If you're traveling with friends, you can all sign up for WeChat (it's like the Chinese version of Facebook & WhatsApp) and message each other with it.

Also, remember that Punchdrunk thrives on surprise. Please avoid major spoilers in your recaps, especially about 1:1s and aspects of the show that have changed.

What else should I do in Shanghai?

I used the Lonely Planet Guide to Shanghai - it has a lot of useful information. (If we’re friends IRL, be in touch if you want to borrow my copy.)

A few recommendations:

Jing'an Temple. It's just one Metro stop from the McKinnon. You pay a small entry fee and can then wander around exploring the statues and architecture. It's beautiful and a nice peaceful refuge from all the crowds.

French Concession. It has beautiful architecture and a lot of interesting bars, restaurants, and independent shops. (Sort of like the Greenwich Village of Shanghai.) We started with a self-guided tour in our guide book, then wandered off of it and went exploring.

Yu Gardens. Lovely (if crowded) old fashioned Chinese gardens.

Fairmont Peace Hotel. A stunning 1930s Art Deco hotel on the Bund. They offer a tour and have a cocktail lounge, and live jazz in the evenings until after midnight. Very expensive drinks, though.

Shanghai Museum. Gorgeous porcelain and other historical art. Plus it's free.

Contemporary Art. We were going to visit M50 Creative Park and/or Power Station of Art but we ran out of time.

Shikumen Museum - this architectural style is used in the show, should be worth the visit to see the real thing. (Although we didn't actually see it because I got lost. Oops. Next time!)

Propaganda Poster Art Centre - another thing on our list that we didn't make it to see.

Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. Just absurd. Go with a friend and laugh. Maybe have a drink first. On the way to this you'll also have a view of the Art Deco architecture along the Bund, and the crazy modern skyline of Pudong.

Do be aware that the smog is particularly bad around the river. (I could taste it on my lips. Blargh.)

Shanghai Disneyland. The new Pirates of the Caribbean ride is wonderful, but we made the mistake of getting there an hour after the park opened and spent most of the time in a miserable amount of queues. (Queues to get into the park, queues for Fast Passes, queues to get into queues, queues full of children hitting you while their parents do nothing to stop them...)

ONLY do this if you can get there a half hour before it opens. It's just too miserably crowded otherwise.

The "must do" rides are Pirates of the Caribbean, Snow White, and Tron. Peter Pan, Buzz Lightyear, & Soaring are also good.

(Be warned that the rides often break. We didn't get to ride Snow White even though it's the main ride in Fantasyland, because it was broken most of the day.)

If you can get there early, cover the big rides immediately. First get a fast pass for either Snow White or Tron, then ride Pirates of the Caribbean (do "single rider" for a shorter queue), then use your first Fast Pass, get another Fast Pass for Snow White or Tron, queue for something else, use the second Fast Pass, and then leave or see a show.

Where should I eat?

I'm vegan and was worried about finding decent food, but between @errrrtythebabber's amazing recommendations, the HappyCow vegan app, and @whenwillweawake's willingness to try anything, we found a ton of great food to eat.

Be warned that it's almost impossible to find vegetarian food in most non-vegetarian places, especially if you don't speak Mandarin. Many seemingly-vegetarian things are actually cooked in lard or meat sauces, or have unexpected meat or seafood toppings.

A few recommendations:

Vegetarian Lifestyle - On the same block as the McKinnon! Great vegetarian food, although they don't speak English so it's difficult to verify what's vegan. The menu has photos and English captions.

If Vegan - Fabulous vegan food a 5-minute walk from the McKinnon. The menu (on an iPad!) also has photos and English captions. From 2-4pm they only serve tea and desserts.

Jing'an Temple - One Metro stop past the McKinnon (~25 minute walk). In the back of the temple there are three floors of vegetarian restaurants including a first floor casual cafe, second floor table service restaurant, and third floor massive buffet (with vegan options labeled).

Fu He Hui - ridiculously swanky, exquisitely high quality 8-course vegetarian meals. They'll adapt it to be vegan if you ask. You'll need a reservation. With the exchange rates, the prices in dollars are incredibly affordable given the level of quality.

How do I make sure I see the amazing new scenes in the show?

Dude, I’m not going to tell you that!

However, if you’re only going to one or two shows, I will give a bit of info on what has changed, so you don’t spend your time on things you’ve already seen in New York.

If you’re going to more than two shows, don’t read this! You’ll figure it out on your own.

The main things that are significantly different than in New York:

New female character

New male character

Cunning Man

Sexy Witch

Speakeasy Barman

The new female character is far more interesting than the new male character. I’m sure he’ll evolve, but sticking with the female character first is a good idea.

Some of these characters have a lot of overlapping scenes. An approach that will show you a lot of what’s changed, without too much repetition, would be to start with Sexy Witch, then switch to the new female character after the banquet. (Sexy will lead you to her.) For the final loop either follow Cunning Man, the new male character, Speakeasy Barman, or go do something else entirely. (Perhaps Duncan or Taxidermist, who are also somewhat different.) When you hit a repeat scene, wander and explore the set.

You could also follow the new female character straight off the first lift, but I think it’s more powerful to see her story in narrative chronological order, ie starting after the first banquet.

Links to all my Sleep No More Shanghai posts:

Overall thoughts

Guide: How to See Sleep No More in Shanghai

Recaps:

Show 1

Show 2

Shows 3 & 4

Show 5

Shows 6 & 7

Show 8

Show 9

Shows 10 & 11

Photos:

Gift shop

Around the McKinnon

Ads for the show around the city

#sleep no more #sleep no more shanghai

37 notes · View notes

dreamalittlebiggerhoney · 7 years ago

Text

This blog is coming from a very naive point of view due to the lack of travelling prior to this holiday and but I’ll try to include more than ‘I went to Barcelona and it was warm’. However saying that, ‘I went to Barcelona’ and it blew my mind. It’s literally like visiting an art gallery except the gallery is an entire city. The architecture is insane which is unsurprising considering the city’s history of artists with Gaudi, Picasso and Miro at the top of the list.

It was Kien and I’s first holiday away together and the first that was more than just a long weekend. I think also the first one where it wasn’t raining in Cornwall or the Lake District. It was a kinda big deal finding out whether we would kill each other in the heat for an extended period of time but also super exciting to do our usual exploring in a different country.

The first thing we did after checking our bags was head down La Ramblas because that’s what everyone told us to do, but I wasn’t really interested in shopping at H&M and Zara when that’s a standard weekend in Birmingham and we were in BARCELONA on a Monday and not at work! The markets on the way down were so busy and full of colours and oh my, the fruit selection was vegan heaven. Then (after getting lost but insisting I knew the way) we arrived at the beach, had a paddle and had tapas by the sea.

Continuing to insist I knew the way we plodded, developed blisters, then hobbled back to the hotel, as Dan began to doubt me we stopped at a bar, because I liked the look of the terrace with dried lavender in beer bottles, for a cocktail – and to reluctantly look at the map only to realise 4 cocktails later that the hotel was at the end of the street but the bar played Nirvana and served free chillies and grilled artichokes in place of where you would normally get peanuts as bar snacks.

Processed with VSCO with 5 preset

To anyone thinking of visiting Barcelona, it goes without saying, as all of the travel guides and reviews have said it for me, that you absolutely 1000% have to visit la Sagrada Familia and bloody please book in advance. I am not an arty person. I wish I was, but I am not. Dan is. He is the person that reads every single plaque next to every single painting at a gallery, whereas I skim the room and maybe get caught on one piece and decide it means something completely opposite to what the artist intended. But this basilica will blow anyones mind. We stood outside it on our first day, repeating ‘wow’ as we noticed new details and intricacies of the building. Then had to pause our wow’s until a couple of days later because that was the soonest we could get in and see the absolute spaceship that should be the home of the elves in middle-earth that has been 130 years in the making.

#gallery-0-35 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-35 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-35 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-35 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

We did a whole ton of other touristy stuff and managed to fit in almost everything and some extra fun stuff. Although using the metro is way easier than London, I was still super proud of myself so we got to take a trip out to visit Castell Montjuic and caught a cable car up there for an extra €25 (and bought the €10 photo they take of you on the way up) instead of walking because the views were insane (and we did 26,000 steps the day before). There is also Montjuic cemetery which is a bit further out and off the tourist route slightly but really worth visiting if you plan it properly and don’t need a wee and aren’t hangry (which unfortunately was not the case for me). By the time we got up to the top of the castle it was misty but you could tell the panoramic view would have been ridiculous if it had been a clear day.

Surprisingly, it took 3 days to have my first ice-cream, but post ice-cream we did the Picasso museum. We didn’t have to book in advance, we queued but not for long. Again, for a non-arty person, it was still incredible to see this incredible portraits and landscape paintings, then seeing the dates and realising he was 14 and that made the paintings even more incredible. Then, you see him stop seeking approval because he knows he’s great. He barely did any commissions in his lifetime and painted abstract pigeons for a year because he could. He ALSO did the artwork for his favourite hang out, Els Quatre Gats (4cats), which is where he had his first exhibition and we had our first dinner of the trip!

The food was lovely and the perfect ease into spanish cuisine (and wine – Albarino while actually in Spain tastes SO much better). But the best meal of the holiday was at El Chigre, a teeny tiny restaurant that sits about 40 covers max. The menu was in spanish which is my favourite thing – I hate it when restaurants make it easy for you and give you an english waiter and translated menu, the struggle and risk of getting something weird is the best part of eating in a different country. Our waiter showed us the fresh catches of the day (so fresh that they still had the hook in) and offered to create a taster menu for us. Six courses, a couple of octopus tentacles and the most ridiculous cider machine later and our minds were blown by the catalan dining experience. This meal, plus the coffee, sealed the deal that Dan and I could move to Barcelona with ease, bar the language barrier but how much more do you really need to say other than ‘dos cortado, por favor’?

The last place we visited, also Gaudi related because the man was a genius, was Park Güell which was originally intended to be a housing development of 60 houses, only two were built and due to a lack of buyers, it is now a public park. It’s free to enter but you need to pay to enter the ‘monumental zone’ (it’s still pretty cheap). Even though it pissed it down and I was in Birkenstocks without a jacket, it cleared up just in time to get awesome views, again, of Barcelona and the park. Set aside a long afternoon because there is so much to see here, including the Gaudi museum (also his former home), but by 6pm in the evening with dinner plans at 7pm, we were totally cultured out and our feet were sleepy.

Processed with VSCO with hb2 preset

Oh hey, we went to a chocolate museum and also got tattoos at @sta.demonia_tattoo_barcelona.

Then we came home and it was pants…

Processed with VSCO with hb2 preset

Extra tips:

Don’t be as scared of pick pocketing as people who have visited will try to make you, but…

Don’t be any less aware of your surroundings than you would in London or another city you don’t know. Just be a sensible person and don’t whip out €50 bills in front of everyone.

A macchiato in Barcelona is a ‘Starbucks Macchiato’, not the espresso with a dash of foam most of us have grown to love. A cortado is the closest you’ll get.

Some sights need booking 3 days in advance, if not more, so plan your time and stick to the time slots you are given!

When given the option to pay in euros or your currency, pick euros! The exchange rate is better.

Has anyone else done Barcelona recently? Leave comments and tips if you have any!

The first european city break: Barcelona This blog is coming from a very naive point of view due to the lack of travelling prior to this holiday and but I'll try to include more than 'I went to Barcelona and it was warm'.

#barcelona #europe #travel

0 notes