Shanghai on Life

Life in Thailand is still moving along as easy and as sweet as ever. We have spent the last while up north in Chiang Mai. We returned yesterday from a 3 day trek in the Thai jungle where we got to ride an elephant, swim in a waterfall a go both white water rafting and bamboo rafting! We were in a group with some Danes, a couple Austrians, a couple Australians and an English guy, plus one pretty hyper and smiley Thai guide.

The elephant ride hit a bit of a glitch when the seat which is tied to the elephant with rope kept slipping off to one side eventually ending with Jen and I still strapped in the seat but hanging off the side of the elephant, but I guess we lived to tell about it! We had a great trip, but it was nice to return to hot showers and sleeping surfaces that aren’t bamboo floors.

Before the trekking tour JP and I took a Thai cooking class for a day, which was pretty fun and mighty tasty! It was a private lessons with two teachers, plus you got to make and eat 9 different dishes – I love Thailand! We made a couple of curries, Pad Thai, spring rolls, banana blossom salad, mango and sticky rice, deepfried ice cream..the list goes on.

One night while out at a bar around the corner from our guesthouse we were sipping on some super tasy 50 baht (<2 CAD) Mojitos and this guy bring by a baby elephant that you can feed for 20 baht. The elephant could dance, accept payment (passing bills from a customer to his owner), pose for pictures, AND (get this) play the harmonica! It was too much, only in Thailand! Now, I know you shouldn’t support of enourage this kind of thing, but the elephant was playing a harmonica! So hard to resist.

Anyhoo, here’s a video Jen took of a different elephant shaking his groove thing in Ayutthaya:

and here’s a video JP took of Cody getting his sunflower seeds robbed by the feisty monkey mentioned in the previous post:

And once again, more detailed posts can be found on Cody’s blog!

Hello Everyone! Greetings from Lop Buri Thailand! The trip is going great so far. Mostly it’s very hot and very delicious. So far we’ve spent a couple of days in Bangkok in the shelter of a small neighbourhood which is essentially purpose-built for tourists. Can you say American style breakfast! Woohoo! We saw some temples, did some shopping, went on a long-tail boat tour, and ate a lot. After Bangkok we trained up to Ayutthaya, the old capital of Siam, where we rented some old bikes and saw oodles of ruins from the city’s heyday back around the 13-1700’s arena. Today we’re in Lop Buri which is famous for its adorable and mischievous monkeys. I can confirm that they are both. We MIGHT have broken the golden rule of any travel health clinic (don’t feed the monkeys)…but you know they were so cute and they were even selling monkey food at the ticket booth. Cody got half of  his bag mugged by one of the more hardcore monkeys which was both terrifying and hilarious. Some tourist were letting the monkeys climb all over them..I did not allow this. Man oh man were they ever cute though!

Anyway, that’s it for now. Check Cody’s blog for more details :D

-Amy

I would just like to make a most exciting blog-official announcement that as of January 16th, my mom, Auntie Rabina, AND Steph will be in Shanghai for a nine day visit!! I am SO excited, excitement that exclamation marks and caps lock cannot sufficiently capture.

In other news, I have set a new ridiculous sleeping record of going to sleep at 6:30 am and waking up at 4:30 pm. I guess people either think this is funny or disgusting. Personally, I have one foot in each camp.

It’s snowing!

So, good Christmassy times in Shanghai kicked off last week with a Tiger Beer Santa Claus pub crawl.  For $15 you got a decently elaborate blue Santa suit,  transportation, and of course, all you can drink Tiger Beer. They had a couple of buses plus about 8 motorcycles with sidecars that people could take turns riding in. Fortunately for me, there wasn’t much competition to get myself in a sidecar as it was freezing cold out, and what a great scene! whizzing around downtown Shanghai in a sidecar in my santa suit! I have to say I was a little bitter that I was forced into the Mrs. Claus version of the suit which involved a skirt and even worse, no beard! Don’t worry though, I managed to score myself a beard by the end of the night, obviously making myself irresistible to all of the gentleman in the bars!

On Wednesday night we went to see the Shanghai Ballet’s Nutcracker. Now, I don’t know much about ballet, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it wasn’t the best ballet performance of all time, but then again, you really just go to the nutcracker for the atmosphere anyway. If this experience is culturally representative, it appears that it’s perfectly okay to chat through theatre performances in China. I actually really enjoyed this because I tend to get a bit restless during ballets and other such things and really liked being about to make my little jokey comments at a normal whisper and not even feel guilty about it! Also, a woman’s phone went off behind us with a rather comical and loud ring tone…so we’re already having a laugh about it, and then she picks it up  and proceeds to have a conversation! This and other similar scenarios (one guy actually dialed someone and started talking) occurred throughout the performance, so it wasn’t even a really an isolated incident.

On Christmas eve a group of about 20 of us went out for a very nice dinner of all-you-can-eat (and drink) Japanese Teppanyaki. Following dinner we went to Christmas mass at an international Catholic Church. After the service we went to a friend’s apartment to drink this German “glühwein” which was followed by clubbing. So in the end it was a very unconventional (but pleasant!) Christmas Eve for me with the mixture of Japanese food, church-going, and bar hopping, but it was as enjoyable as possible under the circumstances of being away for Christmas.

On Christmas morning we rolled out of bed and headed over to another friend’s apartment for a Christmas lunch and hanging around. Some of the French guys provided the French-themed lunch and I ate too much in keeping up with at least one Christmas tradition :D We had a secret Santa gift exchange for which I gave a hot water bottle of sorts that you can plug in and it had an awesome Chinese cartoon lamb all over it saying some nonsense thing in English…I have to admit, I actually really wanted it for myself. Had a nice skype with the family back home and was pleased to see Steph’s Christmas tree costume had arrived. It’s nice to see that things remain “normal” even in my absence.

That evening I hung around the apartment with Danny Boy, Sandra, and Sandra’s boyfriend who is visiting from Germany (also Daniel). We exchanged gifts and ate a delicious Christmas dinner of home-cooked Kraft Dinner (lovingly air-mailed in time for Christmas by my mom, thanks mom!) and spicy chicken wings from McDonald’s. I know it sounds dismal, but actually it was kind of funny and perfect. Sandra was especially excited about the Kraft dinner as she got hooked on it during her exchange in Canada and happens to be in that very small minority of Europeans who has tried it and actually likes the stuff.  Later on the guys came over and we watched “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (classic stuff) and played cards.

Now I’m back to my old lifestyle of avoiding my minimal schoolwork and taking it easy. The main difference now is that I have a massive hoard of chocolate to add to my daily comforts thanks to Christmas gifts and the lovely Christmas care-package sent by mom and dad.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday, thinking of you all lots during this time. Less than a month before Cody and Jen arrive and only a few months until I’m back home, unreal! Merry Christmas everybody!

Today it was 11 degrees, clear and sunny in Shanghai – I love these Chinese winters :D Is anyone else aware that it’s December the middle of December? Christmas is next Friday! I just don’t know when Christmas stopped being an awesome waiting game of advent-calendar dedication to sneaking up on you…I guess it was probably around the time when formalized winter exams started.

Now, I know I said I was planning to ignore Christmas but apparently I just can’t really help myself (mother’s daughter). I’m listening to Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas (totally classic, eh Steph?) as I write this and more Christmas music torrents are downloading. I even bought myself a tacky Santa Claus garland and some twinkly lights for the mantle…but I think I’m going to stop now.  Unconventional Christmas plans are taking shape and will involve some strange mixture of German and Chinese activities (as usual in Shanghai) and then some new Christmas traditions which simply don’t exist in any culture.

The past weeks have been relatively quiet with the usual schoolwork, usual activities, so no complaints here.  School is winding down, or winding up depending on how you look at it. Final projects and exams are looming without the benefit of a Christmas break, but still the academic stress pales in comparison to UVic, so I’m sure I’ll survive.  I am scheduled to have class on Christmas day but our prof told me and Simon (the only international students in the class) that he would cancel the class for us. Maybe he’s sympathetic as he taught in the States for many years, or maybe he just likes an excuse to take the days off, but either way I’m happy about it!

Recently, I discovered reasonably priced bowling in Shanghai. I went with competitive-edge-Simon and perfect-form-Hoyoung so I wasn’t really expecting much in terms of personal performance. But would you believe I scored 163 in the second game?! Yeah, I don’t know what that means either, but I do know I had four strikes in a row followed by a spare :D ahhh it was so hilarious, these kind of things just make my life! But anyhoo, I’m pretty sure that I will never bowl that well ever again. Simon was bitter because I started on my streak after my embarrassing performance in the first game, he thought he should be nice and teach  me how to hold the ball properly – muahahaha! big mistake!

Post-bowling we hit the attached arcade for a quick and abysmal DDR dance-off between me and Simon. Afterwards  Hoyoung hopped on and blew us away – I have never seen someone look so cool when they’re dancing, let alone on a DDR machine! Being the poster-boy of Asian-modesty, Hoyoung insisted that he wasn’t that good. A few days later when it came up in conversation at school it came out that Hoyoung is the 4th place national champ of DDR in Korea!! hahaha! Keep in mind that this  is a very impressive feat in Asia where DDR and arcade video games are about 100x more popular than at home.

Following bowling we went to (the other) Simon’s German-Carnival-themed birthday party. I went as a pumpkin dressed in a full-body jumpsuit get-up (complete with pumpkin stem hat) purchased from what I’m sure is that only costume shop in Shanghai. There was a lot of beer drinking and jumping, singing and linking arms to carnival music. Though I obviously didn’t know the words in German I just shouted along incomprehensibly anyway. Danny boy went as a woman and managed to make it the entire evening wearing Sandra’s heels, actually pretty impressive! Simon went as an “emo” kid who couldn’t manage to get his eyeliner off the next day and permanently weirded out his Chinese tutor – boys with eyeliner is especially socially unacceptable in China.

Continuing with the German holiday theme, last week we went to a German Christmas market hosted by Paulaner’s, the German pub in Shanghai. The atmosphere was amazing, I really felt like I could’ve been in Germany! Even the Germans agreed it felt pretty authentic, citing that there was even the disadvantage of German-style prices :D We drank some holiday “glühwein,” a warm, spiced wine drink, which apparently they have everywhere in Europe under various funny sounding names (glögg in Sweden!).

My life as a foreigner in Shanghai has recently become complete after our relatively recent discovery and obsession with the Shanghai fabric markets, the favourite of all expats and exchange students. Fabric markets are basically large, dingy, crowded malls full of local tailors. Pretty much anything you can imagine or print off the Internet, you can have made there. It’s great, some times a bit risky, but mostly just addictive. Custom cashmere (or sometimes just “cashmere”) coat for $80 anyone? Tailor-made suit for $85 or jeans for $25. Anyway, the fabric markets are great, an especially convenient option for those of us living as Amazon women in this country.

I’ve recently joined a dodgeball team in Shanghai, and I know what you’re thinking and the answer is that you’re right, Chinese people don’t really play dodgeball. One of the girls from my basketball team invited me to play with her as one of her American colleagues organizes the league whose members are composed mostly of expats. It’s reasonably fun aside from those overly-competitive American guys who are taking dodgeball just a weeee bit too seriously (and by a weeeee bit, I mean WAY too seriously!). I haven’t played much dodgeball in the recent past, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a terrifying “sport” to play with grown men. I think I’m going to have to start pumping iron to work on my dodgeball arm.

On Saturday our basketball team played the Shanghai team of the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association! Pretty cool opportunity to play with a professional basketball team in your host country on exchange, I have to say! Needless to say, they were very good, not WMBA good, but impressive nonetheless. The whole event was a very Chinese in my opinion…there was a long introduction, many speeches delivered in a carefully planned order, gifts were exchanged, with pleasantries and ceremonies taking over an hour before the game. The game was short and casual, they went easy on us and even mixed their coaches into their roster. In a serious game they would have slaughtered us, but this would just never happen in China, this concept of “saving face” is so strong, I think this would be considered about 10x more inappropriate than it would be even at home.

Last night the gang went for dinner at Hooters with our Chinese classmates. The restaurant was maybe not the most appropriate of choices to represent western culture, but it was entertaining nonetheless. The Hooters girls dance around to the YMCA and sing songs in Shanghai!!…I’ve never been to Hooters before but I’m pretty sure they don’t usually do that, do they?

That’s it! Merry Christmas everyone if I don’t manage to post before then! :D

Soooooo, Hong Kong was great, as expected :D Once again we are back to “reality” in Shanghai with the final big trip of exchange behind us. It was interesting to see the differences between Hong Kong and mainland China, and there were many! Actually being in Hong Kong hardly feels like being in China at all, more like an international city with no national origin. There were so many foreigners there! and almost everyone speaks English, so we all enjoyed having effective communication skills again for at least a few days.

We arrived on Wednesday evening and headed to our hostel in what we later found out was located in the best district in Hong Kong to make a drug deal! The hostel was clean and the staff friendly in any case, but by far the most hilarious bit was the size of our room. Our 4 person dorm turned out to be about as big as a good-sized master bathroom, with two double beds that were so short I couldn’t sleep straight without my feet hitting the wall. There was about 5-10 square feet of floor space and the rest was just beds. Sandra and I managed ok, but I guess Christian and Simon were not as comfortable and got a little tired of my “big spoon/little spoon” jokes after awhile. That night we went out for ladies night which was even better than in Shanghai, strong free-drinks everywhere you turned. We started off at the “Happy Valley” horse racing tracks where I placed one bet of 20 Hong Kong dollars on Finn McCool (chosen solely based on his name, not on odds of course) for the win. After being distracted and missing the race we decided to try and cash our slips anyway, pretty sure that we hadn’t won. If you haven’t already guessed where this is going, I won 132 HKD! woohoo!…I wish I could say it was close to par with CAD, but in reality it works out to placing a bet of about $3 and winning $18, but still!

On Thursday we slept in a little then took a tram to some peak for a view of the skyline. A little bit of shopping and eating later we went for a harbour cruise on a refurbished ferry from the 1920’s to see the Hong Kong lights at night. We then met up with Sandra’s friend Nina for a dinner of snake soup and fried snake on rice :D Snake was once a popular dish in Hong Kong but isn’t very common anymore. Some people say it tastes like chicken, but people say that about everything and I don’t think it’s very true in the case of snake. The inside muscley bit was this kind of flaky and a bit gritty in texture and the skin was fatty and a bit slimy as could be expected. It was only gross psychologically, the taste really wasn’t so bad, but I guess it wouldn’t be my favourite meat even if I could overcome the psychological barriers. After dinner we asked the owners if they could bring out one of the live snakes from the back (they butcher them on-site) and so they did! I was all set to hold it and prove what a snake cowboy I am, but then the guy pulls the snake out of the box and proceeds to scotch-tape its mouth shut! I probably would have been more comfortable if he hadn’t taped the mouth at all, but knowing the snake needed to be muzzled and knowing that that muzzle was made of scotch tape seriously freaked me out! I decided to wuss out and let other prove their bravery by holding it while I settled for just  touching him on his back end. After dinner we headed to the big night market for some atmosphere and shopping. At the night market we decided to have our fortune told which was a definite good use of money. I feel more comfortable planning my future as I will have a strong, tall husband within a few years and won’t have to do anything but housework after marriage – and to think I’ve already wasted all this time on trying to build up a future career! Apparently I need to keep my boyfriends and husbands away from Steph though, because if I don’t she’s going to run off with him! haha too good! Before I get married I’m going to work in the travel industry, in education (because of my long fingers of course), selling furniture, or in a flower shop (bit random, but I guess I wouldn’t be overly opposed). I will have good health, be bad at saving money, get married in 2011, 2014, or 2016 and should live in cold places. Highlights of the fortune telling included Simon’s study habits being trashed again and again, Nina facing eerily accurate accounts of her family’s medical history and her romantic life, and Sandra being told she would marry an ugly, fat man (but he will be rich!).

On Friday we spent a frustrating morning getting ripped off in a cab which was fortunately followed by some super delicious dim sum at a restaurant/club called Dragon-I. The food was really amazing, for sure the best dumplings I’ve had since coming to China. We also sampled chicken feet which was better than snake in my opinion, but maybe it’s just that I liked the sauce.  After dim sum we headed to the ferry terminal and took a ferry to Macau.

In Macau we hit the international food festival followed by the casinos of course. Christian was the only one who managed any lucky wins but ended up gambling it back down to an insignificant sum. I lost on the slots, but Simon came out as the biggest loser of the evening in roulette. So yeah, pretty pathetic results, but at least I still have my glory days at the horse track!

The next day started with an early morning ferry ride and some very long naps in the Hong Kong airport as our flight got delayed for several hours. Turns out that a cargo plane overshot the runway in Shanghai and crashed which shut down the airport for the better part of the morning. We arrived home in time to shower and meet up again with other friends for Armin Van Buuren. So basically he’s this trance DJ from the Netherlands who everybody has heard of, but me? He “performed” (is this the correct verb for a DJ?) at a local club called M2 and I have to say that it was a very strange and awesome experience. It was such a funny thing because it was like attending a concert…he performed on a stage of sorts, people were all sweaty, pressed together, cheering and jumping around as if they’re at a concert, but not actually dancing to the music as if they’re in a club. And he’s standing up there most of the time not really doing much, fiddling around with the equipment a bit and then just, I don’t know, putting his arms up in the air and dancing around a bit – and all the while people are going CRAZY for him. The energy was good and I was definitely in the spirit of it. Despite never having heard his “music” (mixes? I have no idea about DJ terminology apparently) before I decided everything would work out for the best if I played the part of obsessed fan for the evening. I managed to make it to the front of the stage where (and I swear to you) Armin gave me the thumbs up! What a dream boat! Anyway, it was a good evening.

Well, it’s bedtime in Shanghai. Love to all of you out there in blog land.

amy