Friday, July 11, 2008

Days 5-8 Shanghai, China

The flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai was short and we slept the whole time anyway because of that darn 445 am wake up call. However, the little sleep on the plane did not stop us from passing out as soon as we got into our hotel room. Speaking of the hotel room, DAMN!! A room like this in the states would cost nearly 10x the amount. Man we love Asia!





















Upon awaking from our restful slumber, we took it to the streets. Let's preface this by saying the smog created by the pollution could choke you quicker than LA ever could. Regardless, we made it out into the smog free city center. We were very hungry at this point as we had been sleeping for the past 8 hours. We found KFC and Pizza Hut but we were determined to find more local food. And try as we may, our persistance paid off. Our non-English-speaking selection proved to be a great choice. Although we had to point to what we wanted on the menu, we got our point across. Dean ordered spicy bullfrog and beef tripe and I ordered a more conservative dish of shrimp and corn cakes. All of the food was delicious and I even tried spicy bullfrog! Suprisingly it was quite good but I just could not get past all floating frog parts in the bowl. The spine was just freaking me out. Dean could care less, in fact he enjoyed chomping on the frog spine to ensure he got every bit of meat off of it. GROSS!!!!! Sadly, I forgot my camera and couldn't catch this exciting moment on film. =/

After dinner we opted for a taxi ride back to the hotel because even though it was well past dark, the heat was unbearable and when you add smog into the mix it makes for a very killer combo. We jumped in the cab and showed the driver our hotel address in Chinese. Not to our surprise, he got lost and we ended up in an alley full of massage parlors (No, not all the naughty ones you guys are thinking of). Our curiosity led us into one such place...just to check prices of course. 24 bucks for an hour body massage?? This was an offer we could not refuse. My massage was lovely. Dean raved about his too. It was really hysterical though communicating wiithout words. They didn't speak English and our Chinese is well, non-existant at this point. I've started to notice a pretty universal behavior - when you can't communicate through language with someone it always seems to be funny. Everyone just laughs. So we paid for a massage and laughed as we left.

Needless to say, sleep came easy that night.

On day 2 we enjoyed the buffet breakfast at our hotel. It had traditional chinese selections as well as western options. Dean enjoyed his dim sum and congee while I had fresh fruit and waffles. Call me boring but I don't really care to have the runs while I'm here. Dean doesn't mind.

To be continued...




















2 comments:

Debbie Brown said...

Hi Ashley & Dean,

I love the pics and descriptive of your trip! How very exciting!! Please, have while in Thailand have some Meegrob for me! It's so hard to find here in Atlanta! Have fun!

Debbie

Michelle said...

I just found your blog!!! I'm so excited to read all the cool stuff you guys are doing. We are in ATL for the week right now - that is our adventure for the summer, ha ha.