January 31st, what a great day!

Happy Birthday Donald!

If I were home I would make a Kermit cake for you!

    Donald is traveling in Germany for work so his coworkers took him out to a traditional Bavarian beer hall, The Hofbauhaus. In his own words "where they apparently don't have candles, but are happy to put a firecracker in your apple strudel".

Love you!

How about some Hot Pot and pork stone?!

  One last full day with Trisha and Shawn and we made the most of it (after spending the morning getting all their China purchases packed up). I was lucky b/c even after all their purchases there was still room for me to send them home with some of the stuff that I wouldn't need for the next month. 

   Once we left the apartment we headed out to find a supermarket where I thought that Shawn could buy a cheap CD case. You see, he needed it for all of his legal DVDs ;)  I had been to this super market once before and thought I remembered exactly where it was located but on the way there I began to doubt myself...and for good reason b/c it wan't where I remembered it. After standing on the sidewalk completely baffled on which way to walk I decided to try one other place...while walking there I began to doubt myself again. Well, all of this doubting worked b/c out of frustration I whipped my head around and in the center of my view was a sign screaming CenturyMart, the supermarket we were looking for! We made our purchases of CD cases and discounted Chinese New Year decorations then made out way to Taikang Road, AKA Tianzifang. This community is a layout of traditional longtang allyways and is so much fun to walk around. One of the things that Donald liked best about shopping Tianzifang was an old man selling Pork Stone. As it sounds from the name it is a stone that looks like pork. No joke! Donald told me that I must show this to Trisha and Shawn. For me, there is no guiding visitors through these allyways b/c it all a big maze. Luckily we just stumbled upon the Pork Stone and T&S loved it as much as Donald thought they would. Here are some pics that I found on the internet (sorry, the 3 of us were too distracted staring at the amazingly delicious looking stone that we forgot to take pictures)!

 

Yes, that is stone not pork!

   Luckily, checking out Pork Stone was not the only thing we did. It was a cold day so we grabbed some warm alcoholic drinks :) I also purchased one of my favorite treats for Trisha and Shawn to try, Steamed Milk. It is a custard like milky, slightly sweet dessert. Turns out that neither of them liked it very much. I also briefly forgot that Trisha goes not like eggs and apparently this dessert is mostly eggs whites! Ooops. Well, one miss among many winning food choices for them to try...I'd say that's still a good record for me.

   For our last dinner together, Shawn really wanted to go out for hot pot. Since I normally eat alone I have only been out for hot pot with coworker while traveling so I didn't know where to go in Shanghai. After reading up online about a few places we chose Hai Di Lao Hot Pot, located near the metro stop that I get off for work each day. Turns out that we picked correctly but were also not the only people wanting to eat hot pot during the new year holiday we arrived and were given #65. Once we figured out what was going on we found the electronic board that was calling out everyone's numbers...they were at #35! We had a long wait. This joint was prepared for people to wait a long time, the waiting room (shown in the picture above) was filled with small table with games on each one, there was snacks/drinks being served, a nail salon station, shoe shining, glasses cleaning and many other odd services that you could enjoy all while waiting for your hot pot table. They also give you a menu to fill out with your order so you can be ready as soon as you are seated (they had to dig an English menu out from the back room for us).

The menu. You could get things like, Laopai Blood Curd, Duck Intestine, Pig Trotter,
Bullfrog, Bean Curd Sheets, Shepherd's Purse and Amorphophallus Slices. None of which we ordered.

We opted for the mushroom broth base.

Shawn getting prepped to spill on himself.

   For those that don't know how to eat hot pot here is a quick tutorial. Order a yummy broth base, then order lots of thinly sliced meats (we chose beef, lamb and crab) then order tons of veggies (bamboo shoots, pea shoots, cabbage, mushrooms) and on top of all of that you need a starch (potato starch noodles) then some sort of tofu (tofu skins for us please). Get the broth boiling and start dumping all the ingredients in. Wait a few minutes and start picking all the cooked goodies out. Oh, I forgot, you have to mix your own dipping sauce from the sauce bar (sesame paste, peanut paste, soy sauce, oyster sauce, BBQ sauce (Chinese style not USA style), sesames, onions, garlic, cilantro, hot chili oil, chopped hot peppers, MSG, salt, Sichuan pepper powder...any combo will do). Now take out all the cooked goodies, dip them in your sauce and enjoy!

We've made a mess!

   We all stuffed ourselves at dinner and needed to go for a good long walk. Since Trisha and Shawn had only seen The Bund in daylight I thought it would be a must to get them there in the evening. You see, The Bund is best for viewing earlier in the morning when all the old Chinese are out doing Tai Chi or in the evening when all the beautiful buildings are lit up. We hoped on the metro and made out way to the waterfront. We walked East Nanjing Road to see all the neon, bright lights and tourist then walked to see The Bund. Along the way we stopped to see the newly renovated Peace Hotel. The Peace Hotel was supposed to be one of the more tastefully complete renovations in Shanghai. It's true, the 1929 art deco hotel sparkled in all the right ways.

Can you see the little lite orbs in the sky? They are tiny, look carefully...there are about 5
in this picture. Those are lit paper lanterns released into the sky. It was very cool to watch.

Shawn taking in the view.

   We then made our way back to my neighborhood and tried to go to the Boxing Cat Brewery but it was closed still for the new year so we started walking home and stumble upon the Blue Frog Bar and Grill so we stopped for a drink. The rest of the walk home is when it got interesting...

   It first started with a little market with a 30 foot snake of firecrackers that lead around 2 sides of the store, the front and the ally side. We walked past quickly but then stopped on the opposite corner to witness this string of firecrackers. People set them off in front of business and homes to scare away any evil spirits that are nearby which is why it is such a big part of tradition for the New Year celebration. Check out this video:

   From the little corner store all the way to my apartment building we saw all sorts of fireworks, some even came from the middle of a large street with cars passing by.  Once back at my place we thought we were settling in for a quiet even...that was until I looked out my bedroom window and saw this...

All that red stuff are firecrackers, and the men weren't even done laying them out.
They kept bring out more and more HUGE boxes of this stuff to add to the pile. It was
going to be one heck of a display.

   We watched for 30 minutes from my balcony as they continued to lay out more firecrackers. It was starting to become a joke every time a new box showed up. We waited and waited for them to set these things on fire...finally we realized that they were going to wait until midnight. We had about 30 more minutes to wait. The men, all guards for the different businesses on that corner, set up barriers to protect there precious lay-out of fireworks. This extra time before midnight also gave the men a chance to test their fire extinguishers.

See the car at the bottom of the picture? It seems that they couldn't find the owner
to have them move the vehicle so they took rubber mats from the coffee shop and
laid them in from of the car as a shield. 

They were setting this up right next to a huge road.

Then it all went to hell about 5 minutes before midnight!

Fireworks were going off all around us, above, below, in front, to the left and to the right!
We even had to step back inside the apartment at one point b/c we were getting hit by debris.

   I'm still not sure what all the fireworks were for, I forgot to ask at work today. I was even starting to feel bad that I missed the New Year in Shanghai, it's supposed to be crazy with fireworks but it seems that I no longer had to feel bad b/c that evening totally made up for it! I think that Trisha and Shawn would agree. Fireworks will never be the same since I won't be in them at eye level.

more amazing gifts

Thanks Mom and Christine!

   It seems the my family and friends haven't forgotten about me yet! My mom sent an amazing package with health bars, Chocolate bars (all my favorites, of course), Michigan honey (way better then the stuff I bought here), amazing Jalapeno tortilla chips and blueberry licorice (way better then it sounds). Christine sent me a bag of homemade granola and a very interesting article about Nike expanding with a new giant office planned in Shanghai. Here's the Press Release.

   I appreciate all the well wishes, packages, emails, postcard and letters that I've received while being oversea. It has made a world of a difference to me. I couldn't have done this trip without all the support. :)

35 days until I'm back in Portland!

Tuesday and Wednesday of Spring Festival

   We had lucked out the 2 previous days in YangShuo with cloudy and cool weather but we woke up to rain and cold on Tuesday. After sitting down to another hearty breakfast at our hostel we talked about wanting to stay warm for the first part of the day. That meant only one activity...visiting a cave. We read about quite a few caves in the area but the one that came highly recommended from the staff at the hostel was the Silver Cave about 25km out of town. This is the one that we decided to visit. So we hired the same taxi driver from the day before to drive us out to Silver Cave and wait for us so that he could also drive us back to YangShuo.

The view from the cave entrance.

   Of course all the caves are privatized by the Chinese Government and a fee needs to be paid in order to enter. Above left, the entrance to the Silver Cave. Right, The map of the cave showing the 2km walk that we were about to engage upon. We also read warnings about staying with your guide b/c the lights in the cave run on 5 minute limits controlled by the guides (making it sound like you wold be left in complete darkness if you lagged too far behind). I wasn't thrilled about being with a group of loud tourists so I just assumed that the light limit wasn't true and we were told this just so we wouldn't spend a lot of time lingering in the cave. Check out what we saw as soon as we walked in...

...colorfully light rocks.

    As soon as I stepped in I realized just how cheesy this tour was going to be. All the cool stalactites and stalagmites were lite up with multicolor lighting. The cave itself proved to be very amazing but the lights really gave it a Disney Land feel. It only took us about 5 mins to loose our tour group.

Left, using the flash helped to eliminate the colors and actually see the rock formations. Right,

some of the lighting did keep us entertained. There was wiring everywhere in the cave and signs

of electric shock in areas that were wet. Hmmm...water + tons of wiring =....

There were multiple locations were you could pay some
cave workers to take pictures of you with the rock formations.
We chose to take our own photos :)

   Left, advertisements along the cave walks for other privatized attractions in the area. Right, you can't go anywhere in China w/o someone trying to sell you something. These stalls were selling food. If you enlarge the photo you will see that both workers look really bored (I even think one was napping). Aparently, people don't go to caves to eat.

Left, I thought this rock formation was really cool. Right, the exit where more stalls

were set up selling trinkets. Again, they didn't look very busy.

Look in the middle of this photo, the karst in the background has 2 holes in it.
Trisha and I had seen it the day before and were happy to be able to get a picture.

    We returned to YangShuo and got dropped off near some food vendors. After grabbing a snack we walked over to the bus station to see if we could purchase our tickets back to Guilin for the following day. Even w/o a a station worker that could understand any English we were able to purchase out tickets pretty easily. We ended up with seats 3, 4 and 5...now that we knew that our seats were assigned we felt more confident about our second bus ride. Certainly did not want to be the last ones seated ever again :)

Bus station ticket window.

   Across the street from the bus station was YangShuo Park which housed a creepy amusement park for small children, lots of random  communist statues and a karst with steep steps carved up the backside. Trisha and I dragged Shawn up the karst in hopes of getting to the small pagoda at the top. Yes, the steps were as scary as they look in the above photo...steep, slick with mud, uneven and only a 2 foot railing on one side. We did not rush up this karst.

Views from the top

I was checking out my zoom. The left picture, the town below. The right picture,

a zoomed look of one of the homes in the left picture. Yes, she is burning trash! YIKES!

Half way down the karst

   Once back to ground level we found our way to Seven Star Teahouse. We had read about the owner, Annie, that has worked with her family tea plantation for about 25 years. We heard that she had exceptionally green tea and was the woman in town to talk to about any other tea drinking that one would want to do. We were invited to sit and drink tea with her. I don't typically drink tea other then herbal or flower teas (can't handle the caffeine) but it was pretty hard to say no to such fresh local green tea so I also partook in the tea party. We tried the Green tea, Oolong tea and Osmanthus tea, all were very tasty.

   Since the theme of our trip seemed to be "eating" we went and found more street food to enjoy. Below, Shawn and I were eating Chinese Hamburgers, they even came with a money back guarantee (no joke, the booth said "don't like, don't pay"). It would have been pretty hard to not like these little tasty sandwiches. They were mini pocket breads filled with marinated noodles, marinated greens, spicy cured beef, Spring Onions and Cilantro.

Left, one guy making the mini pocket breads. Each bread took about 4 minutes to roll out.

Right, the woman filling the pocket breads to order. There were 2 guys in the back cooking

the little pocket breads. A 4 man operation!

Trisha the bandit, protecting her lungs from the firecracker smoke.

   We obviously did not suffer from a lack of good food and drinks. Below, is the last meal that we were going to have at the hostel so we ordered all the best dishes that we had tried from previous nights. This included YangShuo style fried rice, Beer Duck, Sichuan style beef ribs and dragon eggplant. We stayed up drinking and celebrating our amazing trip.

   On Wednesday we weren't getting picked up to go into town until 1pm (we had a 2pm bus ride to Guilin) so we walked down to the Li River from our hostel. It was a nice calm morning with good views of the river.

Left, a motorized bamboo raft. Right, you could see YangShuo from this spot of the riverbank.

Along our walk we spotted this cool path that
someone was building on the side of their home.

I don't think that I have mentioned yet that there was a lot
of citrus growing in this part of China. Here is an orange grove.

Also. Pomelos are popular in this area. You will see
in a picture below along out bus ride to Guilin.

Left, our bus on the wrong side of the rode passing all sorts of cars. Right,

enlarge this photo so you can see just how popular the large citrus fruit, pomelo,

is in this area of China.

Please take note in the above video that we are on the wrong side of the yellow line

and heading directly into oncoming traffic. This is just how driving in China happens.

   Can you tell from the above picture that the is a bus traffic jam heading into the Guilin bus station? There is a funny story to this. Trisha and I were sitting in the front row seats together and Shawn was one row back all by himself. Once the bus arrived near the Guilin bus station we had to wait awhile before the bus would be able to enter in and drop us off. One of the other passengers got impatient and asked the driver if he would let her out there instead (or at least this is what I assume since I couldn't understand the conversation in Chinese). Trisha and I saw this as our window of opportunity to also exit the bus so we grabbed out bags, hollered at Shawn to follow and got off the bus. We turned around to see that the bus had closed it's door and was driving away and into the station before Shawn had gotten off. We ran after the bus b/c we didn't want to loose Shawn in the crowded bus station. Luckily, we were able to get in and find him w/o any issue but Shawn said that we was frantically trying to explain to the bus driver that he needed to get off with us but apparently the driver completely ignored him. We had some time to kill before our 8:30 flight so we walked around Guilin for a few hours.

One stop was the Longchuanping Marina.

Another stop was the South Stream Hill Park where we got charged 10rmb

 each to enter while all the other Chinese people entering didn't get charged.

Luckily, we saw wildlife which made us feel better about paying the entrance fee ;)

We also snuck into a tour of a really cheesy Buddhist cave.
Now we really felt better about paying the entrance fee.

   Now for the grand finale to our amazing trip. At the beginning of January (about 2 weeks before this trip) I received notification that the original flight that I have booked back to Shanghai had been canceled so the agency that I booked the tickets through sent me notification and they had rebooked us on an earlier flight. So instead of flying out of Guilin at 11:30pm and getting in to Shanghai at 1:20am we were now leaving at 8:30pm and getting in to Shanghai at 11:20pm...a much better schedule or at least I thought. It turns out that the ticket agency failed to point out and I failed to take note that the actual DATE of the flight had also changed. I didn't realize this until we were at the check-in counter and the guy was pointing to the date of our flight saying "that was yesterday". OH SH*T! I was pissed and scared that we would be stuck in Guilin or paying a lot of $$ to get home. I think that the guy at the counter could tell with was a genuine misunderstanding so he hopped on the phone and pushed us off to the side. We waited anxiously for about 20 minutes while he was waiting for a call back. The call arrived, then a women showed up at the counter and started typing away. We saw one boarding pass print, then a second one and finally a third one...she never spoke to us but just handed us our boarding passes for the 8:30pm fight that night. How lucky we were!! And why the heck had the agency not originally just put us on the 8:30pm flight of the same day that I originally booked?! I will never know and at this point don't care b/c we made it home safe and sound.

Our nerves were still getting the best of us (or at least me) so once we were through
security we all took some vodka shots in hopes of relaxation on the plane ride!

It never felt so good to arrive back to Shanghai!