day 10: let's go for a wok

We wake up a little late and go to lunch with Auntie Wendy to a restaurant right across the street from their place. I had been to this place last time I was there. They hand make their noodles, very good soups. Had some green onion pancakes, noodles that are made by shaving off slices from one large ball of noodle dough, some duck, spicy dried fish, and fried dumplings filled with beef, kinda like mini hamburgers.

Auntie Wendy splits and we go home to take a break before more sight-seeing. We snag a cab from my uncle’s place (by then I was incredibly adept at calling the guard and asking for a cab in Mandarin). We head to the People’s Square first, where there are a few museums. We decide to head to the Shanghai Museum of Art. Saw some impressive pieces of ancient art, including jade, bronze, paintings, weapons, masks and statues. We showed up there pretty late, and they were closing after a short while so we didn’t spend lots of time there. Still saw plenty though. Left the museum and walked around some more, through the square, and through a nearby park. Eventually head towards a hotel, the new Radisson hotel, to hopefully exchange a traveler’s check. We head to that hotel cause it has this rad, or shall we say “rad-isson”UFO looking top deck where it appears a bar/restaurant is located. We get in, everything seems to be going fine when I show them my travelers check, sign it, hand my passport over. And then they ask, what room I am in. Oops. Seems you have to be a guest to use their exchange. Scratch that plan. Then we ask how we get to the top floor to check out the bar. Turns out that’s not gonna open for another few weeks. Such is our luck. We walk around the square a bit more, head into another of the thousands of 12 story malls, down to the bottom floor, under the square, and come out to the market street. We walk all the way down that till we once again hit the Bund. Snag a taxi from there back to the house.

We rest up as usual at the house, reheat some of the leftovers from the restaurant earlier in the day for our dinner. Tonight, we decide to go check out a club called VIP, a huge club a friend who had been living there for a while suggested. Take a taxi and luckily inform the taxi the correct place to drop us off. At first we couldn’t find the place as the sign for the club wasn’t on the main street. We head past it at first, then decide to turn around. Due to my inquisitive nature, I decide to check out one place with flashing lights down a large alley, and find the club we are looking for tucked away in a large parking lot being blocked by larger buildings. A large place, pretty neat, but they don’t take credit cards which caused a few problems (remember, I couldn’t get cash cause I couldn’t find anywhere to exchange my traveler’s check). We try to meet some people, but most seem fairly unresponsive. Most people are oddly reluctant to speak to people that only speak English at this club. After just two rounds, we decide to head out.

day 11: shang-bye

Wake up, pack up, go downstairs for a late breakfast. Auntie Wendy has friends over playing mahjong and they join us for the meal too. One couple is there to look into buying property. Seems like the place to buy. I wonder… We call a taxi, and take it to the airport. No bullet train back this time. Oh well. Loooooong line to get out of the country at the immigration checkpoint. No worries though, we’re not in any rush. Get on our plane to Hong Kong. This time, no layover there, we actually stay one day. We have a late flight out, so we arrive fairly late. Getting through immigration there isn’t that bad though. I feel the airport there is well advanced, and we came in at a fairly random day so there aren’t too many people traveling. We take a shuttle to Kowloon, a northern part of the Hong Kong islands. That’s where I booked the hotel at the Salisbury YMCA Hotel. The architecture of the city is quite intriguing, as most seem to be built in unison, built in close proximity like dominoes ready to fall. We arrive at the hotel, with a light sprinkle falling on us. Seems the rain has followed us here too. We check in, settle in, and head back out to check out the city a little. We walk quite a ways up some main roads, neon lights beckoning us on every corner and alleyway. It’s quite the spectacle to see the signs hanging high over the road, just above the double decker buses. We walk through markets, stores, an crazy arcade with video games that seem way more advanced than anything we have in the states. We walk back through an open air mall, where there are several food stands. I buy some bacon-wrapped mini-hotdogs on a stick. SOOO tasty. Gotta have more. Find another stand as we keep walking. Shumai on a stick, dim sum dumplings that I love. Two sticks of snacks, plenty to eat. I could live here forever too! Cheap and tasty, who could ask for more? Head back to the hotel. Bed.

day 9: sweet and sour and short day

Wake up, eat another home cooked meal of course. We once again we, Aunt Wendy, Jason and I, head out to Dong Jia Du for the final pick-up of our new custom tailored suits. They’re snappy and great, we bag ‘em and buy ‘em and take off for our next destination, Huangchang market. I couldn’t find too much information on the place yet, but it seemed to be a place that was designed in an ancient style, but set up as an outdoor mall. Looked pretty cool, especially the restaurant on stilts over the pond in the middle of it all. We look around there for a bit, eat a few snacks (some of the best custard pies I’ve ever had), found a place with some cool cheap reprints of Chinese propaganda posters. Thank goodness for Aunt Wendy. Jason forgot to bargain at one place and he ended up buying full price for something. While for the posters, instead of paying about US$15 for each, we paid only US$3 for each. Score! Finally we head back home by taxi and take a nice long break after, of course, plenty of walking.

Have a nice home cooked meal. Get ready to go out to a club on the Bund. Find Bar Rouge and chill out there for awhile. Everyone there is pretty old or just not our type of people. But certainly a cool place to be, and a fun place to people watch of course. Some people are students, some people are business men, some people are well-off locals. After a few rounds, we head back home to end a nice not so hectic day. Finally, a day that wasn’t too packed.

day 8: so out of it, can't think of clever title...

Wake up, eat a home cooked meal again at the home. More veggies and such. Take a cab out to god knows where to meet up with a friend, Lisa, whom I met on my last visit. She was kind enough to take the day and night off to show us around Shanghai a bit. Once we met up in her neck of the woods, we took another cab to the Weitan, or The Bund as it’s known in English. Jason and I were familiar with it because we walked most of it in the drizzling rain carrying our luggage the first day we arrived in Shanghai. We enjoyed it much more this time, taking a leisure stroll on the walk right along the Huangpu River. We walked around there for a bit until we had to take off for Dong Jia Du to see if our suits and shirts fit right. A quick little taxi trip there again, and Jason and I are trying on our new duds. Pretty sharp, with only a few minor adjustments needed. We wait around for my Aunt Wendy who is supposed to meet us there, but she’s running late. We decide to go grab some more xiao long bao’s nearby where they took us last time. As soon as we show up at that little restaurant, my cellphone rings. It’s my aunt Wendy, and she just got to the tailors. Oops. She comes to meet us at the restaurant while we eat just a few dumplings between the three of us, Lisa, Jason and I.

Now four people strong, we head out in another taxi to meet up with Uncle Monty for an early dinner. Once we saw how much food we ordered, we realized we probably shouldn’t have eaten all those xiao long baos. We have a very tender pepper steak, crab cakes, fish, steamed dumplings, shrimp, a Chinese version of foie gras (goose liver) and these great asian tortilla-like snack filled with an eggplant dish. I’m sure there was more than that, but that’s about all I can remember.

From there, Lisa, Jason and I took a nice walk to the market where they are known for selling all the knock off brand name goods, like sunglasses, purses, clothing and more. Can't recall the name of it at the moment. Most notorious for the guys that come up to you (and by you I mean someone they think is obviously not from Shanghai) and ask “DVD? Rolex? Purses?” Eventually, after refusing, they will ask the ever enticing question, “Sex DVD?” We still politely refused. And then just flat our refused. Some of those guys are much too persistent. Jason got pretty good at saying, “Bu yao!” which translates to “I don’t want!” We walked around there for a bit, but didn’t have the patience to purchase anything.

Once again, another taxi is taken back to my uncle’s place to relax after a long day of walking. We hang out for a little bit there, clean up ourselves before heading out again. Lisa takes us to Xin Tian Di (sp?) to a bar called Soho. She wrangles some good seats for us, and we sit down to have some drinks. It’s pretty different as they have a guy standing on a podium right in front of the bar and he’s signing what are apparently big Chinese pop songs. After he’s done, two girls get up on podiums and start dancing to some dance music. And then eventually another girl gets up to sing more Chinese pop songs. After hearing quite enough (but still thoroughly enjoying ourselves) we head to the rest of Xin Tian Di. It’s very similar to a Third Street Promenade, except it’s not one straight street, it bends and curves through tall modern stone buildings. We walk around there too, and finally settle on another bar to sit outside of and grab another round. It was nice to just sit and people watch in a popular hot spot. Jason noticed one girl working the foreigners, trying to get a “date.” I don’t think anyone could get away with that on Third Street Promenade.

Thinking our night had ended there, Lisa surprised us by taking us to one last spot to grab a late night meal. A very VERY spicy Szechuan restaurant that serves hot pot style. There are two bowls in the middle over the stove, one in the middle which is very spicy, and an outer ring that is just broth. Lisa is from the Szechuan region and loves spicy food, and devours tons while we try and tolerate the burning. My lips were burning to the point of being numb but it all still tasted great. Lots of garlic and cilantro and, of course, chili oil. Noodles, vegetables, beef, pork, and something like crawdads were boiled and consumed. Once we got to the point of bursting, we called it quits and headed home. Got in our cab, said thank you and goodnight to Lisa, and called it a night.