Forty hours is a long damn time, but the best part of it has to be stepping into a hot shower when it's all done.

No more train rollicking, no more instant noodles, no more people camped out on my bunk, no more foul-smelling toilets or basins clogged with Congee in a Can.

That shower this morning felt incredible. Like I'd never felt hot water on my back before. Like soap smelled better than perfume, and shampoo was the new opium.

Then I sat down in the bathtub, dumped in the clothes I'd worn for forty hours nonstop, and discovered that washing them with me meant the water turned a dark, virulent turd-brown.

Which, of course, was just a damn fine reason to take another of those ecstatically Bollywood-wet-sari-wonderful showers ...

Andrew did the honours of going straight back out to pound the pavements in search of hard-sleeper tickets to Beijing, saving me the agony of going back out myself. Chivalry is not dead, I can assure you!

Then, cleansed and showered, we strolled to 'our' hole-in-the-wall local canteen, ordered up a plate of white-cooked chicken, another plate of freshly stir-fried greens, and a half-steamerful of xiaolongbao (tiny dumplings).

One Suntory beer and one Pepsi later, the world seemed a more decent place - even though this sunny, heaty, pulsing, sweaty vision of Shanghai is gonna take some getting used to.

When we left this city just weeks ago, it was grey-skied and bitter. Chill-factor winds were whipping the Bund, the temperature was under zero, and construction workers' hands were barely gripping their jackhammers as they worked long into the frigid nighttime.

All this sticky, steamy warmth has got me quite confused. This is not the dour, haughty, Euro-fied place we left ... this is a different city altogether.

We're eyeing each other, me and Shanghai. Sizing one another up.