Day 60: Hangzhou

Day of Planning
We spent most of this day planning our last 17 days.  We have a number of things left to do including going to Yellow Mountain (Huang Shan), a second national park Zhangjaijie, take a river cruise down the Yangtze, visit Chongching and then head back to Shenzhen and Hong Kong.  We also hope to finish a couple days early so we can spend a couple days in Taiwan , if we can change our flight, before heading back to LA.

Dinner on the Lake
We did get out in the late afternoon and walked around a large lake the town is famous for and ate dinner at a famous restaurant on an island in the lake.  Dinner was good and the stroll around lake provided a nice break from our busy days of tourist attractions

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At the lake

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a ridiculously good fatty pork

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The lake at night

Day 59: Shanghai and Hangzhou (上海﹐杭州)

Last day of shopping
We realized that we had bought too much and needed to get new luggage for all the stuff we have bought, so we headed back to the shopping market, we also picked up some things that friends requested.

Shanghai Confucian Temple(上海城隍廟) and Park (豫園)
After shopping we headed to the temple in downtown Shanghai and then headed to a park that is located next to the temple.  The park(豫園) were built in the rich Ming dynasty officials between 1559 and 1577.  They were then destroyed during the Opium War and again later by the French.  They have been restored to represent a the Ming dynasty.  The Shanghai Chenghuang Temple(上海城隍廟) is a Taoist temple and was first constructed during the Yongle (永樂) reign (1403-1424) of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).  We then picked up some soup dumplings on the food street and a McFlurry from McDonalds

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Outside the temple

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In the temple as prayers were going on

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Charlotte sitting in the park

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They liked round doors in their parks

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A kid was feeding these fish and they were going crazy

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Another interesting door

Train to Hangzhou (杭州)
After we finished with the tourist sites, we headed to the train station to catch our train to Hangzhou.  The train started off being uneventful, there was a woman in the seat next to me and she was holding her 4 year old, but both fell asleep.  About about 30 minutes before our train got in though they woke up, I was looking the other way talking with Charlotte and when i turned around I was surprised to see the woman had pulled down her sons pants and was getting him to pee into a cup (the bathroom was 2 rows of seats in front of us and no line).  After he was done she put the cup in a plastic bag with her empty food containers and left it on the fold down table in front of her when she left the train.  Although public urination is not a new scene to us in China, we were surprised because this was on the fastest, newest and fanciest train departing from the biggest city in China.

Getting a cab in Hangzhou
The cab scene outside the train station was crazy, you just had to see a cab with people getting let off and judge when it would stop and try to get in.  We got 1 cab, but he wanted to pull over further, when he stopped some other westerners basically pushed Charlotte out of the way and the cab driver told them they could have the car if they paid ~$9.  We got mad at the other westerners, but they refused to admit any wrong doing.  We got the very next cab and it only cost us $2 to go across town, so I guess it worked out better for us.

Hangzhou
After we checked in we went to get some food, Charlotte got some Duck tongue, intestines and stomach.  I got some duck wings and potato chips.

Day 58: Shanghai (上海)

The Bund
While we prayed for more rain to drive tourists away from the Expo we went to the Shanghai Bund and walked along a pedestrian street to get there and then took some pictures of the modern buildings across the rivers

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Charlotte in front of the Peace hotel

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Another shot of the hotel

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Shanghai across the river

Expo: Day 2
While it wasn't really raining, it was threatening rain so we headed back to the Expo, but while there was not a line for tickets, the threat of rain is not strong enough to drive away the tourists and it was much more packed today than it was the night a couple days ago.  Luckily we had been there before so we had a game plan of how to deal.  Wait in 1 line and see a pavilion then find that countries bar and drink away the pain we had just dealt with before finding the next pavilion.  This seemed to work pretty well, except too many countries didn't bring beer with them so we ended up only getting to taste about 3 different beers, but we got food at the others which was also very good.  We still could not get into the big countries like France, Italy, Great Britain, etc...but we did get into New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Finland, Lithuania, African nations and Ireland.  The highlights of the day were probably Ireland and Algeria of all places.  The biggest disappointment for me was Norway, which I just didn't understand and Croatia which had almost nothing in it except some ties.  Lithuania had a good bar where we talked to the bar tender and another volunteer from one of the Caribbean islands.  We asked him why the Caribbean islands show was so small and empty, to which he responded that they were the Caribbean islands did we really expect them to put a lot of effort into it?

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Inside New Zealand

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At the Belgian Bar, we couldnt get in because of a huge line waiting for chocolate (Charlotte was very disappointed)

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Spain

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Germany, couldn't get in here either and they were charging more for their beers in China than they did at Oktoberfest in Munich

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Finish meatballs and dessert

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Great Britain's strange building that was full of a display of seeds.

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Closeup of Great Britain, each spike was a tube with a different type of seed in it.

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You aren't Canadian
Only about half of the countries seemed to have volunteers from their own country at the Expo, the others seemed to be only a couple if any natives and the rest Chinese people pretending to be from that country (like wearing a hat from the outback to look Australian).  Knowing this and also knowing that if you are a citizen you get in ahead of the line, we headed to the Canadian pavilion and saw a bunch of Chinese people working the door.  I decided I could pull off being Canadian, I mean how hard could that be, eh?  I went up and the just seeing me one girl asked in broken English if I was Canadian which I responded I was.  This was going to be easier then I thought.  When we got up though she asked for our passport.  We told her we didnt have it, because we didnt know we could get in fast with it.  She was still going to let us in, until another Chinese volunteer came up who spoke English.  He asked where we were from, I responded Vancouver (trying to avoid having to speak French which I don't know a single word of).  He then asked what part, because he also was from Vancouver, I pulled out that I was actually was from Richmond, a town outside Vancouver.  He then asked where and I gave vague answers and then he asked who the mayor of Vancouver was.  Who knew the Canadians would be so strict about seeing a building about their country.  We told them that we live in the states now, but at this time we were getting tired of this and just headed off to another country instead.

Another rainy night
After we left the expo it started raining hard again.  We went to a cafe that we knew had the internet, we were ready to order, but no one ever came up to us so we just spent an hour using their internet and left.  We then swung by a nightclub that Charlotte wanted to see from the 1900's on the way home.

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Charlotte out in the rain

Day 57: Shanghai (上海)

Only Type of Shopping I Like
Went to the Shanghai fake market today to do some more shopping and get some more shirts, ties, etc...Charlotte is amused because I normally hate shopping, but I don't mind it here.  Probably because I usually know I am getting the cheapest deal possible.  Again when you don't care if you get the item it makes bargaining very easy.  Especially I try and only deal with things I have an idea what the price should be and stay away from any electronics where you don't really know the quality.  We kept hoping it would rain more so we could go back to the Expo, but no luck

Tourist Area/Dinner #1
Of course around 6pm, when it was too late to go to the Expo it did start raining.  At first not too bad, so we walked around and got what were supposed to be the most famous soup buns in China.  The store has 3 levels, first floor is the cheapest and worst food, 2nd floor is better but more expensive and 3rd floor is the most expensive.  We went for the 2nd floor.  All the seats were taken and they seem to only do 1 round of cooking at a time so everyone in the restaurant was waiting for food.  We grabbed some of the first round to go and they were ok, but not to the standards we have had in Taiwan.

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Tourist Area of Shanghai

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Soup buns to go.

Dinner #2
Since it was still raining some so we couldn't walk around we went to the next famous restaurant in the area.  It has pictures of all the famous people who ate there including Bill and Hilliary Clinton and  Fidel Castro.  It also describes in the menu which items they ordered and which was their favorite.  We went with Bill Clintons favorite dishes along with some others.

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The 2nd restaurant

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Bill Clintons favorite dishes, I liked the ones on the left, they tasted like they were filled with barbecue sauce

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Shanghai rain

Day 56: Shanghai (上海)

Looks like a rainy day
Took a morning train to Shanghai (上海) and got to our hotel, which ended up being a number of studio apartments that the owner rents.  It was a very nice room and in a perfect location next to the subway station, however there was no internet (which is why I fell behind on my blog and am now catching up).  After we got settled we took a little break from traveling, even though it was only a couple hours on the train, each leg seems to take longer to recover from.  Something that I don't think I have mentioned before, but think this would be a good time because this hotel took it to an extreme, is the see through doors or walls in bathrooms in China.  Almost every hotel we have stayed at has at least a window with no curtains that goes to the bathroom, sometimes the entire door is glass, but this hotel the door and wall were all glass.  Normally I don't care because it is just Charlotte and myself, but I have no clue how businessmen would travel together and not care.  While I say I normally don't care I had to do something about this because as much as I don't need privacy from Charlotte I didn't like the idea of having to watch anyone go to the bathroom while I was watching TV, so I pushed a large armoire in front of the glass wall.

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View of the bathroom from the bed after I had already pushed the armoire halfway across the window

Around 1pm we saw some large rainclouds and came up with a plan.  Shanghai is currently holding a World Expo, which is basically a place for countries to create a building and show off their country.  Japan held it a couple years ago, so now China's main goal is to have more tourists visit it than Japan did.  During July they averaged 400,000 tourists a day.  Our plan was that hopefully it would start raining and scare people home and we could get in with less people if we dont mind the rain.  Equipped with our umbrella's and pocket ponchos we took off.

Shanghai Expo
When we exited the subway stop for the Expo, it was pouring rain and everyone was trying to hide inside the station.  We walked through huge ankle deep puddles in the parking lot to get to the ticket booth and got 2 tickets.  As we entered, the rain already started to let up, but it seems our plan worked because the Expo was not nearly as crowded as we thought it would be.  Now "not crowded" means only probably 200,000 people there, so there was still no chance of getting into some of the more popular buildings like Saudi Arabia, Japan, US, Canada or most European countries which consistently have lines up to 4-6 hours to get in.  After seeing a couple buildings we couldn't understand why anyone would wait on line that long.  As Charlotte described it as a larger version of Epcot Center(佛州迪士尼世界度假區愛波卡特主題樂園), which is not a glowing review, but some countries pavilions had food and beer from their countries so that made us happy.  We started off going to Morocco's pavilion as the line seemed short and it was a country we want to visit.  After visiting their pavilion Charlotte decided it is a boring country.

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China Pavilion

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Wet inside the China Pavilion

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Charlotte in front of the United Arab Emirates

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Front of Morocco

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Inside Morocco

A Taste of Home
Now this might not make a lot of sense to people who don't know us or work with us, but the second pavilion we went to was the Sri Lanka Pavilion.  One of our advisers at UCLA is from Sri Lanka and we went to take pictures for her and to learn what we could about the country.  This actually turned out to be one of the better laid out buildings with a good mix of sculptures, pictures and text describing the history of the country without trying to be super innovative with crazy touch screens or movies.  In addition they had an area serving Sri Lankan food and after 2 months on the road, unlike taking breaks to eat US food like KFC which we could eat anywhere in the world, eating the Sri Lankan food really made us feel homesick for LA as our adviser constantly is hosting parties and bringing us food at work.  There were approximately the same amount of people in the pavilion as there are normally at her house too!

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Sri Lanka

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Inside Sri Lanka

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Tasty Sri Lankan food

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About the same amount of people normally at our advisers house

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Don't really know what this guy was demonstrating

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The sign on the elephant says "Do not sit", the mother pointed it out to her child before telling him to sit on it for a picture

Rest of the Expo
We spent the rest of the time going to more of the countries that Chinese either hadn't heard of or didn't care about so we could get in pretty fast. We visited Slovakia, Czech Republic, a building with all the Caribbean nations, Cambodia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brazil and many others, some more impressive than others and the Caribbean had almost nothing in it, Jamaica probably showed the most with a cardboard cutout of Usain Bolt with Bob Marley music in the background.

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Pakistan had a cool hologram video

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Israel Building

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Charlotte in front of Taiwan, the line was too long for us to get in.

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Australia

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Czech Republic

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We had wine at some country, don't remember which, but it was good

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Chilling with Usain Bolt

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The roof of one of the Czech Republic which had a weird art display

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Learning about Brunei on touch screens

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Brazil assumed they would win the World Cup and a large portion was soccer related

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Brazil's outside soccer game had an error

Passports
Some either really smart or very sinister person came up with the idea of selling mainly children, and of course Charlotte, "passports" that they could get stamped at each country they visited.  This led to a mob scene as groups of 20-50 chinese children that would run from one country to the next ignoring anything that resembled learning and go straight for the stamps that Charlotte would also fight over.  Parents would also send the children alone to lines as they felt they did not have to wait on line and would sneak their way under peoples arms and behind their backs to cut in line and get their stamps faster.

End of the day, US Pavilion
It turned out that if you are a citizen of a country, you could get in without waiting in line.  This is of course true for every country except, China and the US!  However we did notice that around 10pm, 14 hours after the park opened and 6 hours after horrible rains, there were less people and we might get into the US Pavilion.  After about a 10 minute wait we were in.  The first stop was a movie where they filmed people (mainly New Yorkers) trying to speak Chinese and failing horribly and laughing at themselves.  I don't really know what the purpose of this, but the Chinese seemed to find it pretty funny.  Then everyone is shuttled into another room where it is another movie.  This time Hilary Clinton started off talking and then some people from GE saying kids really are smart and we should listen to them.  Then it went on for 5-10 minutes of kids lecturing the Chinese to clean up the environment, but I don't think many people got it.  Finally we got brought into another room where there was...another movie!  This time it was about a kid who inspires a neighborhood to turn a trash heap into a neighborhood garden!  Then that was it.  It was pretty sad display, but still better then the Caribbean!

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US pavilion had a restaurant that had ice cream floats

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Charlotte and the mascot