The Last Full Day in Shanghai

Today was the first day on my own here in China. It was nice to be able to sleep in until 11am, although I slept only a little before 3am so I didn't get all that much sleep anyway. Could have been worse. I got a few things organized around my hotel room and headed to Victor's place for lunch. Victor, who is back in Shanghai after growing up for 17 years in L.A., lives with his dad, who came back to Shanghai from the US two years ago. Very nice people. We had some very Shanghainese foods prepared by Victor's "Ya yi" (translated: "aunt", which is what they call their maids out of respect), and then we went DVD/Karaoke disc shopping. The store Victor took me to is the largest DVD store I've seen, and they have all sorts of movies, but not at the best prices because they SEEM to be legit. I picked up a few Karaoke DVDs and VCDs, as well as a Romance of Three Kingdoms VCD box set. The deal with this store is that if you buy over 500RMB worth, you get a discounted price on each item. My items together would have totalled around 400RMB, but some other woman, who didn't have 500RMB either asked if I wanted to make the purchase with her. So we did, and with the discounted prices, I paid 220RMB. I parted with Victor and headed back to the hotel.

From the hotel, I went to a market off Nanjing Road that I had been to to buy a new piece of luggage to bring home all the things I spent money on during the trip (and there was A LOT to bring home). I got a larger luggage and a small "North Face" backpack for about $32CDN. Went back to the hotel, packed a few things, and went out to a Shanghai Xiao Chi (Shanghai small eats) for dinner by myself. For 14 RMB (~$2.30 CDN), I had 10 xiao long baos and a bowl of beef and noodles in soup. Cheap! Well, Spectrum's no longer paying for my trip, so I decided to be a little more thrifty.

Finally, I jumped in a taxi and headed out Southwest to meet Andy (whom I saw in Hangzhou before). We went for a foot massage upon my request, since I wanted one and Carol had recommended it the day before as well. It cost about $7.5 for about 1 hour's work. The funny bit here was that as the masseuse was working on my left foot, she was cranking pretty hard. I winced inside, but I held a straight face as I continued talking to Andy. Finally, I mentioned that I was only pretending it didn't hurt, and the masseuse piped up too, saying that she was wondering why it didn't hurt! She said she was putting a lot of pressure in there, and was getting tired. Guess I should have said something. But we had a good laugh. She was a blind masseuse, which is often advertised for some stores, but often not really true once you get inside. Anyway, the rest of the massage was good. Andy then took me to a popular pub called Paulaner Munchen, which is pretty close to the House of Blues and Jazz. This place seemed to be very popular with the foreigners (the majority of the patrons were), and the workers were dressed up in sort of a Dutch-styled dress. They had a Filipino band (two girls singing, a guy on the electric guitar and singing, and another guy on the keyboard). With songs like Dancing Queen, It's Raining Men, Moulin Rouge, and more, everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Shortly after, I jumped back into a taxi and came back to the hotel. Story over.

Kevin