Advertisement
Published: March 30th 2006
WARNING: THIS ONE IS REALLY LONG AND INDICATIVE OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WAIT A WEEK TO BLOG. SORRY ABOUT THAT AND IF YOU WANT TO SKIP OVER PARTS OF IT, WE UNDERSTAND. WE'LL TRY TO DO THIS MORE OFTEN FROM NOW ON.
Right now, we are in Hangzhou with a little time to kill before our train back to Shanghai. Since our last post, things have been pretty uneventful but crazy depending on how you look at it.
We got into Shanghai last Friday around noon and went to a hostel to try and get a room, the same hostel we had tried to book the day before with no luck. Well, again, we were unsuccessful so it was off to a hotel around the corner. Not a bad place and I think it's proximity to where we were originally headed saved our sanity. After getting checked in, we decided to go check out the town and seeing as how it was St. Patty's day, we made our first stop at a brew house for some of their personal beer. It was pretty good and the food wasn't bad either.
We then checked out the skyline of
Shanghai, which was amazing, from a bar with a good view. After that, we were on our way to O'Malley's an Irish Pub in town. On the way to catch a cab, we ran into our good buddy Barry from England who we met in Beijing. He was hanging out with some other British guys and a girl named Barbie from Canada. We all caught a cab and enjoyed the most expensive (delicous too) beers we've had on this trip. Seeing as how it was St. Patrick's day and Shanghai is Modernized, aka expensive, we spent way too much money throughout the night. Either way it was a good time and we needed to let loose a bit. We were getting a bit restless and worn down from the constant go go go of the trip.
The next day we set out to try and find NCAA tourney basketball. We'd been informed that you could watch it on the internet, and in a perfect world, you definitely can, but in our world, things don't work out that way. After a few attempts, we set out to a sports bar that claimed to be "American" and had sports on TV.
Barry's in Shanghai
We just happened to run into him. CrazyWell, instead of b-ball, we got skateboarding and ping pong. Entertaining but not quite what we wanted. We decided to cut our losses and sat down for a real live "American" hamburger and some enchiladas. Needless to say, it wasn't dead on but it did the job. As a bonus, my enchiladas tasted both like enchiladas and lasagna, so I kind of killed 2 birds with one stone. Gotta love straight up tomato sauce on enchiladas. It even had Italian spices like oregano sprinkled in for good measure.
On our way from there, we decided to check out another sports bar down the street called the Big Bamboo and that's where things got interesting. I saw a guy wearing a Texas National Champion Shirt so of course I stopped by to say Hook 'Em. Turns out the guy is from Texas and is opening a BBQ joint in Shanghai, the same one I'd read about in a magazine a week or so before. We ended up spending the afternoon at the Big Bamboo with our new buddy Ken, aka Bubba, of Bubba's BBQ drinking Carlsberg and talking about everything from his new restaurant to why he lives in China
to Texas sports. He made some interesting points about living abroad and whilst not convinced we could see why someone would consider it.
He gave us a couple of recommendations on dinner and ended up taking us to one of his favorite spots for Hunan Ribs. These things are amazing. Fall off the bone tender, seasoned with a bunch of stuff including Comino, which was unexpected, and pretty cheap to boot. During dinner he asked us if we'd like to stay and work at his restaurant, which we respectfully declined. Too much left to see aside from the fact that it seemed a bit overwhelming to just stay there and do something like that. We did tell him to keep in touch though so you never know...After dinner he invited us to a party at one of his buddy's houses. We were of course very cautious in accepting so as not to get suckered into a weird situation but we did take him up on the offer. We ended up on the 13th floor of a really cool apartment building hanging out with people from all over the world playing darts and getting to know more folks. It was
The skyline in Shanghai
This was from a little hostel bar. Can you believe it? a pretty good time but before too long we were exhausted and ready to head home.
Overall it was a pretty cool day and just an interesting little experience to have when you just expect to go see some sights and check out a new city. It kind of gave us a new perspective on Shanghai.
Well after all that fun, we paid dearly on Sunday. Our bodies basically told us to slow down and we did just that. We washed some clothes and actually got to dry them. Who cares that it took 7 hours to do it, we were just excited to actually clean our clothes outside of a dank bathroom and to dry them, well that was just a bit too much. The collars on my shirts actually went back to their normal size and my socks lost that brownish-gray hue they were taking on.
We went out for Peking Duck again that night which we both love and just took it easy. Monday, we set out to actually see some of Shanghai, which was cool. After checking out the European Architecture of the Bund we stopped in a park and had a little
The Bund
This was interesting. One side consisted of these old, western style buildings and the other side were whacky modern buildings. picnic. We've started eating a lot of Peanut Butter Sandwiches and we actually sprung for Jelly and chips to complete the picnic this time. Not bad at all. After getting our fill of the city, we went back to the hostel and chilled out before going to check out another restaurant.
We ended up on the 10th floor of this mall/department store eating Sichuan (really spicy and tasty, or at least that's my translation) food with an amazing view of the more modern side of Huangpu River with tons of skyscrapers and really interesting architecture. T pointed out that it was pretty cool because all of the buildings were huge and all very unique. There are a lot of different influences going into the buildings and you can see that they are constantly trying to out do each other.
We went back early so we could get up and get ready for our trip here to Hangzhou, which is about 2 hours southwest of Shanghai and home to a beautiful lake area. After almost missing our train, we got here and checked into our hostel. We then went for a walk around the HUGE West Lake, which is
really nice. It's actually quiet, there weren't a ton of bikes looking to mow you down everywhere and there's some really cool scenery. Unfortunately, it's very hazy so you can't see the full scale of it but it's a nice break from the hustle and bustle of the cities we've been in for the past month. With that said, there are still 6.6 million people living in the city so it's funny how your idea of "small town" changes depending on where you are at the time.
After tiring ourselves out walking around the lake we ate dinner at "Hangzhou's Most Famous Restaurant." That's according to our Lonely Planet guide, which is great, but we've come to realize not always the most accurate account of how things really are. To their credit it's probably pretty daunting to cover a whole country in 1200 pages or less but I think they got a little lazy with some parts of it. Maps don't always lead you where you expect and there are a few misprints here and there, like the one today where the address to a restaurant listed ended up being an Architect's office, but hey, nobody's perfect right?
We are now headed back to Shanghai before departing on another marathon journey of 25 HOURS to Hong Kong. We've got 1 week left in China and I think we're ready for a change of scenery. It's been great but we're getting a little worn down by it all so it will be nice to get to Thailand and just chill on the beach. I think we're both starting to realize how long this trip really is and while the good outweighs the bad (by a margin of 41 to 34 according to our "I'm tired of... and I enjoy... list) it definitely wears you down. We miss the house and the dogs and more than anything our friends and family. So if any of you guys get a wild hair, come meet us somewhere. We're taking this trip as far as we can so if you want to join us, feel free.
Oh, and I promise we won't wait this long to post next time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 7; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0459s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
