Alex and Jenn's trip to China

September 11-12th:
We had a 14 hour flight from JFK to Pudong International in Shanghai. I would say we were flying one of the most ghetto airlines to china, as there was not television screens near us and we didn't even have the little air vents that shoot fresh air at you. However, to keep ourselves from losing a day due to jetlag, we drugged ourselves on anti-nausea medications (mostly me though, since Alex can sleep anytime and anywhere) and slept a lot on the plane. We were picked up by private van at the airport and driven to our hotel, which was probably the fanciest hotel I had ever been in. We found ourselves not doing much, since we got in at 7pm, so we simply settled in and crashed.

September 13th:
World Expo day 1! Alex and I got up at around 7am due to the affects of jetlag and grabbed the complimentary breakfast at the hotel, which had mostly traditional chinese breakfast items like steamed pork buns and congee. After that we took the subway to the expo, which had already opened at 9. We tried to first get into the China Pavilion, which was the largest and most lavish pavilion in the park, but you could only get it by reservation. So instead we headed to the China Provinces pavilion, which was a large pavilion containing multiple smaller pavilions that showcase what each province in China has to offer. Some were good, some were a little silly. One that I thought was very good was the province that grew the Emperor's tea, which, as the name might suggest, is the tea only the emperor could drink. We got to get free samples of that tea, but I didn't think it was that special and neither did Alex. But it was a good time anyway. We then went to go get some lunch and map out a game plan, but it ended up backfiring as we found that in order to go into the pavilions of the major countries, you would end up waiting for hours. So we walked around the smaller pavilions such as Uzbekistan, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Iran was pretty cool since there was a live band playing traditional Persian music. Afghanistan decided to partner with Disney and was promoting the fact that the story of Aladdin takes place in Afghanistan. They even had princess Jasmine and Aladdin flying on a magic carpet in one of it's pictures and they were selling tiny magic lamps. After we hit all those pavilions we decided we might as well suck it up and go to one of the larger countries, so we decided on Japan. The wait was 4 hours long and it was horrible. It wasn't even that hot, but in china, there is no sense of courtesy or the idea of politly standing in line. Everyone tries to take whatever little advantage they can get, even if it get's them nowhere. So there was a lot of pushing and shoving and Alex was getting very annoyed by the time we got to the actual pavilion (4 hours after we decided to go). The actual Japanese pavilion was interesting. They had a new sterilization machine that would turn sewage into drinking water in a closed system and Toyota was premiering a robot that can play the violin and a vehicle that was a combination of a wheelchair and a segway. Alex and I believe that if that is the best Toyota has to offer, then the company is doomed. Then there was a live opera type performance in the pavilion before it was the end of the tour. Alex and I were quite a bit disappointed that we waited 4 hours for something so silly and left the expo to get dinner. Dinner was pretty good, as we had decided to go to this place called Yangs Fry Dumpling, which was supposed to have the best fried soup dumplings in the city. However, we got there at 9 and everything inside the Mall was closing, so we ended up eating lamb kabob's and shrimp skewers and then walked to a small diner and got regular soup dumplings and roasted pork. We then headed home.

September 14th:
Alex and I decided we really wanted to do the China Pavilion, as that is supposed to be the best pavilion. So we got up early and went into the Expo at 7am, trying to get the reserved tickets needed to get in to the China pavilion. Unfourtantly, we were too late (even thought the park opens at 9) and we were not able to get them. We found out later that all 40,000 reservation tickets sell out 5 minutes after the park opens, so we would have had to be there at 4am in order to get them and then we still may not have gotten them. So we went to the European section and did the Russian pavilion, which was alright. Not worth waiting more than a 1/2 hour, so I'm glad we got there early. We then tried to go to the Italy pavilion, but already by 10am it was a 3 hour wait. We were so frustrated by that time that we decided to give up and leave the Expo for good, not coming back for the third day. Instead, we headed to a small market outside of the Expo, picked up some fruit and headed back to the Hotel. There, we called Alex's grand-uncle and met up with him for an amazing lunch of high class Cantonese food at one of the restaurants he owns. It was pretty awesome. Then we decided we did want to spend money and headed to the Pearl Market and ended up buying a whole bunch of pirated DVD's like Kick-Ass, Dexter and Star Trek: Enterprise. We also got new Bose headphones for Alex and all of this came out to about 50 bucks. I love China bargaining.

September 15th:
When Alex and I met up with his Uncle, the Uncle said to come the next day in the morning. Or so we thought. So Alex and I got there in the morning to meet him and ended waiting 4 hours until 1pm for him. We finally realized as we left without seeing him that the translation for morning (or breakfast) is the same as afternoon, just with a different tone, so we probably misinterpreted what he said. However, we left all the same an d bought a snack of fried soup dumpling, which were so delicious and cheap. When something that good is 5 yuan and it's 6.5 yuan to the dollar, you know something is going right. We then headed to a mall that was near the restaurant and looked at electronics. Nothing interesting though, as they mostly were selling apple products like the iPad and iPhone. But we did go to the food court, which is unlike any food court in America, and got bibimbap (a Korean rice and vegetable dish). Afterwards, we decided it was time to get fitted for the costumes that we decided on for NY Comic Con and Halloween. So we went to the silk market and did that and ended up getting custom, tailor made silk clothes for less than $200 total. We then decided to spend our night at a teppanyaki and sushi restaurant, getting the all you can eat hibachi grilled food and sushi for $30/person. So awesome. We at so much and it was great. We got Wagu beef, sushi, grilled seafood and some really good veggies.

September 16th:
We checked out of our hotel in Shanghai and took a bullet train to Hangzhou, which is a vacation area for the people of Shanghai. It is surrounded by a large lake called "West Lake" and large pagodas and temples. We walked to the lake after getting into our ghetto hotel and walked around it, taking a boat tour of the lake and buying the tea that the region is known for. We then tried to go to a banquet hall to get tradition Hangzhou food, but the restaurant closed earlier than we thought, so we ended up eating at KFC. Unfortunately, KFC in china is kind of an abortion of actual KFC and it made me a bit sick, so I ended up just eating cup o'noodle from a local convenience store.

September 17th:
Hangzhou is known for it's tea, so we decided to go to a tea house before leaving the city. I picked out the teahouse and it turned out to be quite a success. It was called the Qing Teng Teahouse and you buy any tea you want and there's an all you can eat snackbar that goes with it. However, these snacks included things like fried rice, schezuan noodles and fruit, but also stranger things like roasted duck feet and lotus nuts (which were really gross, fyi). After that, we were supposed to have a reserved flight at 3pm to Beijing, but the website we booked the flight through ended up canceling our reservation without telling us (but still charging Alex's credit card) and we ended up having to wait at the airport for 6 hours just to get on the next flight to Beijing that had seats. We were quite annoyed at the situation, but we tried to keep a positive attitude by sitting at the airport teahouse and having some really good teas while watching our DVD's from Shanghai. We ended up getting into Beijing around midnight and crashing.

September 18th:
After all the trouble in Shanghai and Hangzhou, we decided to sleep in and head out for lunch, where I picked out a more famous Beijing Duck place. Oh, and it was good. Probably some of the best duck I had ever had. We shared a full duck between the 2 of us and it was perfect. We then headed to the Pudong Antique Market, which is know for it's Antiques and "Antiques." We ended up having a good time just walking along and seeing all the random crap people were selling. A few booths had stuff from the Nazi era, so it was definitely interesting to see a Swastika medal and SS badges just sitting around waiting to be bargained for. Alex is convinced they were real artifacts as why would anyone create a factory to make fake Nazi paraphernalia like SS badges. I'm not sure though, as almost everything there was obviously fake. But I did decide on getting a Chinese mortar and Pestle and Alex bought a little alarm that was painted red and has Chairman Mao waving as it ticked off the seconds. We called it Mao o'clock. We then decided that we had enough and headed to the hotel so we could drop off our stuff and I could book a tour to the Great Wall. For dinner, we went to a night market which is a long street filled with food vendors that sell snack foods like dumpling and candied fruit, but also kebobs that ranged from normal things like crabs, shrimp and lamb to weird and exotic things like centipedes, grasshoppers and scorpions. Blegh! The worst was when we went to a part of the market that the scorpions were alive and their little legs were kicking helplessly as they were displayed on their kebob sticks. We ended up getting an order of dumplings, crab kebobs (which were 3 whole soft shell crabs on a stick), lamb kebobs and steamed pork buns. Though with the steamed buns, we weren't sure it was pork as the name for them had the symbol for Dog, but it could have also been the symbol for the region these buns were made it. We couldn't tell, but we will go with the latter conclusion.

September 19th:
We got up early to catch the Great Wall tour, which ended up being really good. It was an english speaking tour, so our tour guide was really nice and helpful. We first hit the Ming tombs, which houses the 3rd Ming Dynasty emperor. It was nice and had some really cool treasures. Though not as many as there should have been, since the government mostly destroyed that stuff during the Communist takeover. But what was left was very nice. We then were lead to a tourist trap, which was a Jade factory. However, despite it being an obvious tourist trap, Alex and I enjoyed the Jade collection and I actually bought a cute puzzle ball made of jade for a pretty cheap price. The restaurant that was a part of the jade factory was mediocre, but what could you do. It was for white people. We then headed to the Great Wall, which was great. Though Alex and I realized very quickly that even though we exercise on a regular basis, we were grossly out of shape and going up some of the parts of the Great Wall almost killed us. There were some slopes that were literally at a 90 degree angle. Not cool. But we made it to the best lookout point and I was happy about that. Coming down was probably one of the scariest things I've ever done though. And the section we went to was Badaling, which is the easiest and most famous section. Good thing we didn't do what Alex did the first time, which was walk the more destroyed sections where half the wall would be missing. After the great wall, we headed to another tourist trip, this time in the form of a teahouse called "Dr. Tea." Seriously, I can't make that up. The tea was ok, but to buy any of it was overly priced. To make up for that I asked our tour guide if he had a recommendation for Chinese hot pot in the city and he gave us the name of a place that turned out to be a Muslim Chinese hot pot place. It was very good and it brought us to a market that was selling little charms for 3 yuan's each, so I picked up some souvenir's for my friends.

September 20th:
We were only supposed to be in Beijing for 3 days, but we decided to extend our stay another 2 days so we could have a good experience of the city. We walked to the Temple of Heaven park, which we hadn't realized before, but was apparently about 4 blocks away from our hotel. We picked up this thing that litterally translated as a "Meat Cookie" in English. It was a pork patty stuffed in a fried dough. It was so greasy and so good. So we got to the Temple of Heaven and toured the entire grounds. Then we headed to a mall and ate at Pizza hut, since it had been over a week since we had eaten anything with cheese in it and Pizza Hut is set up like a fancy italian resturant in china. It was amazing pizza and food. I was impressed. Then we headed to the olympic park and toured the birds nest and the water cube. In order to make money, half of the olympic pools in the water cube have been converted to a large, indoor waterpark with water slides and a large wave pool. It made me regret not bringing a bathing suit, but whatever. We then had great korean BBQ nearby to our hotel for dinner.

September 21th:
We decided we wanted another "Meat Cookie" but they were sold out when we got there, so instead we got this crepe that had egg and crunch things smothered in 4 different sauces in it. Not bad, but not as good as the meat cookie. we then went to the forbidden city and hit up both the Hall of Clocks and the treasury. We were planning on going to the summer palace, but it was raining pretty hard by that time and Alex wasn't feeling well, so we headed back to the Hotel. Soon, it came apparent Alex was really not feeling well at all and we figured out that the night before, when we ate the korean BBQ, we had eaten it with raw vegetables (korean BBQ is usually eaten as cooked meat wrapped in raw lettuce leaves) that were probably washed in tap water, so I had to go out by myself to a pharmacy with a piece of paper that Alex translated into Chinese that asked for medication for fever, which he was getting. I was able to get Tylenol and Alex felt better after a few hours. We then got tickets for an acrobatic show, which is a big thing in Beijing. We ate Beijing duck again, as it was our last night in Beijing, saw the acrobatics show, which was directed by the guy who does Cirque du Soleil, so it looked very french except it had Chinese people in it.

September 22st:
We had an early flight back to Shanghai, which is about a 2.5 hour flight. I ended up getting sicker than Alex due to the Korean BBQ and Alex tried to convince me to go to a foreigner's hospital. The compromise was that we would stay in the hotel for the night and not eat anything heavy, so we at some light Japanese food and that was it.

September 23nd:
We tried again and this time succeeded at eating at Yangs Fry dumpling. They were so amazing and totally worth the effort. We then picked up our clothes from the silk market, then headed to another market to pick up some new shoes for Alex. We then realized we were right by the Science and Technology museum, so we toured that for a while. Then we headed to the SWFC tower, which is the tallest building in the world and went up to the observation deck. We then at schuzuan hot pot close to the hotel with a lot of seafood, veggies (we cooked them this time) and had a ton of sauces to go with them. We then bought ice cream at the grocery store. Alex had a crunky bar, which I think was supposed to be the chinglish version of crunch bar. I had this waffle stuffed with ice cream called a dandy bar.

September 24th:
We woke up pretty late and took the subway to Alex's old school and ate the muslim chinese wrap that Alex used to get when he lived at NYU Shanghai. We then headed to the market near the science museum again to pick up an umbrella that Alex really liked. Then headed back to the hotel and hung for a while. As celebration of our last night in China, we ate at the fanciest Teppanyaki buffet we could find. We then stayed up late so we could sleep on the plane to get rid of Jetlag.

September 25th:
14 hour flight back to NYC. Thank God for Xanax.