Shanghai Nights!

Still reeling from the scam realization. I sleep in late but join the Finnish girl and her Chinese roomie for a night cruise. Actually it turns out to be a trip around ‘The Bund’ like Shanghai’s waterfront to some of the Chinese friend’s fave places.

We went to the glamorous area which looked like something out of Santa Barbara’s downtown State Street shopping area. Really classy. I took lots of pictures.

We passed a Starbucks and our Finnish friend mentioned she had never tried one.    What?!  The Chinese girl and I both looked at each other.  ?   That had to be remedied.    When 'Helen' pointed to a bottled frappaccino in the display case, my Chinese friend and I both exclaimed, "NOooooooo!" :O and helped her order something more memorable for her Starbucks initiation--like an iced grande hazelnut mocha frappuccino.

After that, we tried out the local frozen yogurt shop.    I ordered a green tea frozen yogurt with watermelon, papaya, gummy squares and mango on top.   It was very good to the taste but I was starting to realize, 'I can’t have any more sugar!  

In-between reaching another Cantonese desert place on The Bund we shared some sweet Chrysanthemum tea and a mango, sticky rice, coconut milk sundae. Very good, but too much sugar!   All this sampling, walking around in the heat, eating wild combinations of food started to take effect. In the cab Helen, who has just been here two days, said she was going to throw up.

The taxi drove us as fast as we could back to the hostel.   Oh, the poor girl. I can’t imagine.   In one afternoon/evening, Helen had sampled frozen green tea yogurt, Chrysanthemum tea, tofu and green bean street food, herb-filled wantons, fried spinach, lychee fruit--which tasted a bit ‘off’, a squash-like fruit, and then that first-ever mocha hazelnut frap.   A local Chinese person would have been sick with that combo.

Not that China’s food is bad, but all of that on a China-newbie stomach is too much. (As it turned out, she was okay and didn’t end up throwing up but it was pretty gruesome in the meantime.   Foreign travel trauma averted for the moment.)

I think we all slept way late the next day.    I got up in time to wander around the neighborhood but also decided--when thinking about bed time that next day--that I could not sleep another night on a hard dorm bed. 

It was now down to my last two days in China. The only softer option was a private room.  I went for it and am now happily typing, solomente.