Back in Shanghai!: Part One

Day 1:

I've only been back for a few days and I already regret not booking a longer trip T_T My original plan from way back was to just do a 1-2 month trip and just live here...because when will I ever get a chance to again? Plus I'm just bumming around until work starts anyways. And I didn't expect to go on a week long trip T_T So I really only have ~5? days in Shanghai after I factor in airport days. 

Anyways, I lost a day because I was going forward in time. I arrived with no problems, and slept most of the way, tbh. I watched Deadpool, The Revenant, and 500 Days of Summer on the plane. 

I arrived in the evening, and my friend and I went to Yershari (耶里夏丽) for Xinjiang food. 

The food was good!! And relatively inexpensive too. 

Revisited Nanjing Dong Lu and walked over to the Bund before meeting up with some others at Lujiazui. When I got home, I completely passed out after washing up. 

Day 2:

The next day, I met up with my friend (+others) for lunch at Grandma's Home (老婆家). The service was a tad slow but the food was alright. I didn't really take pictures, but I recommend the shrimp with vermicelli! 

Accidentally ordered this...yep, just a plate of green peas.

I roamed and loitered around for a bit before heading to Barbarossa (restaurant and lounge), which is located right in People's Square. They have happy hour everyday (50% off drinks!) so we went there for a bit while waiting for a friend to check out his new apartment. 

It was already 10:45PM before we had dinner because it ended up taking longer than expected :( At first we were going to Koreatown because we wanted KBBQ but then the cab driver kept suggesting going to 老外街 instead for more international options, so we drive past 韩国街 and the kept driving and driving. Wtf, but we already knew what we wanted to eat so I dunno why my friend agreed to keep going!! >:( 

So we ended up at this Korean restaurant (forgot the name) in the middle of nowhere because we didn't want to go to 老外街 but the place wasn't too memorable... the meats weren't marinated, so we were just eating grilled meat :| But it was nice to see my friend again!! 

But I was already so tired since much earlier T_T We still stayed out and went to Shakespeare Bar on Yongkang Lu (永康路) to meet up with someone. Ahhh I'm so bad, I was caught dozing a couple of times T_T When we finally went home, I just passed out while sitting (because I was waiting for the bathroom to wash up). Sleepily washed up and completely knocked out. 

Day 3:

Met up with my friend to eat malatang for lunch!

One of the many things that I missed :(

And then... I found my heaven T_T

I actually asked around for a place like this when I was in shanghai before, but I didn't hear of this place! Ugh, regrets. So many regrets.

Photo credit: My friend, Y

My loot... (minus 3 of them)

Snacking 因为我是胖子。

So this was part one of my trip in Shanghai! I'm in Phuket now, so I'll blog about that one next. So until next time~

Thanksgiving in Shanghai

As you may or may not know, Thanksgiving isn't celebrated abroad. Luckily, our program organized a dinner for us to get together. 

I came from the fabric market, and since I had to make adjustments and order more things, we ended up a bit late.

Saw this beauty on our way to the restaurant. I think the Oriental Pearl Tower will always be my favorite-looking telecom tower...

Food spam:

Fried 腐竹 dish.. omg so delicious. Probably my second favorite dish of the night

So many veggies... 我的肉呢?!

Now the ultimate question is... did we have turkey? Nope. Ate 烤鸭 (roasted duck) instead. I think each table had two whole ducks. -drools- it was so yummy and tender.

Roasted duck skin

Fried (?) rest of the duck

People don't eat turkey in Shanghai (or China, as far as I know), so I think it's appropriate and clever to eat 烤鸭 instead. From what I heard, they sell (uncooked?) turkeys for like $100 O_O Dang.

 I felt like the only one eating at the table. I probably ate half of the food T_T;; 

In the end, they served us this uh fried shrimp thing. But they ran out of trees to place them on, so our table only had a plain dish!

So when the other table finished, we took their tree and decorated it ourselves.. the waitress laughed at us but helped us with putting it on.

To end the night, we walked to the Bund and the weather was really nice too, so it was perfect! 

Still not the best shot, but the best for me. I've been wanting to go to the Bund at night since I never did all semester. My feet were starting to hurt from my heels, so after some complaining, we went home :X 

I am thankful for having the opportunity to be abroad and travel after the semester. I'm glad I met some of the people that I did. Doesn't take Thanksgiving to make me realize this, but I think I am blessed for what I have now. ^^

I took some leftovers for lunch because I had work the next day. I had to go back into my room to change jackets and during the process, I left the box of food on my bed and found it after I got back from Beijing that weekend fml

If interested, below are the details of the restaurant:

Restaurant: 老北京 (Lao Beijing)

Address: 河南南路1号，靠近延安东路 (No. 1 Henan Nan Lu, near Yan’an Dong Lu)

Nearest station: Yuyuan (Line 10), Exit 1

Until next time!

Shanghai: Mercato by Jean-Georges

Mercato 

Address: 3 Zhong Shan Dong Yi Lu 6th Floor near Guang Dong Lu

中山东一路3号外滩3号6楼(近广东路)

Price: ¥238/person

Food: 4/5

Recommended?: I suppose so, but it's quite pricey and the portions are small.

Located right on the Bund, it was hard to find the entrance of this place so we walked around back and forth before realizing the entrance was a turn into the street and not on the main street. 

You have a nice view of the Pudong from the windows, and we weren’t right by the window, but that’s okay.

While waiting for our friend to get here, we munched and munched on the complimentary bread, at least I did anyways. 

We decided to do family style just because everything sounded so good.. 

Photos aren't so good because it was so dim at the restaurant! I hope I didn’t make a mistake with the dishes:

Fresh Spaghetti with Blue Mussels, White Wine, Fennel, Chili and Tomato

Porcini Crusted Salmon, Warm Leek Vinaigrette and Herbs

Can't really mess up salmon...it was nice and tender.

Wood Oven Roasted Asparagus, Fontina and Prosciutto 

Prosciutto San Daniele, Four Cheeses and Arugula Pizza

I think I remember not liking this one.

Lobster and Shrimp Ravioli, Olive Oil Lemon and Herbs 

Soooo good when it was still warm. You can actually taste the fillings and it's not just mush.

Tiramisu

Caramelized Lemon Tart, Pinoli, Mascarpone Cream, Basil Sorbet

The basil sorbet was quite interesting. It's kind of like when I tried the olive oil gelato. It's not something I can stand eating all the time though. This dessert dish was really refreshing. 

I can't do a thorough review because:

1) I'm a bad judge of food

2) It's been so long that I forgot how it actually tasted anyways

We also spent too much time taking pictures that the food was starting to get cold. Maybe that's why I wasn't entirely a fan of the food, or maybe it just didn't suit my taste buds. Definitely better than your average restaurant. The "large" isn't really that big tbh. It would be equivalent to maybe 60% of a dish from The Cheesecake Factory. 

I rarely eat out at nice places in Shanghai, so thought it would be nice to dedicate a post to this. 

Until next time :)

I learned how to ride a bike!!

I got tired of walking 25 minutes to class everyday, so I decided to just get a bike, which only takes 10 minutes to get to class. The only issue was not knowing how to ride one...but gotta learn one day, so why not now ;) 

So I bought a second handed one for CNY220 (~$35), which included a basket and lock. It still looks pretty new too. I was debating between this one and a new one, but the color was metallic and not what I wanted. It's still a pretty color though, but might end up being something I didn't want everyday. Plus it was probably more expensive. 

After maybe the third day of riding, I finally got a hang of it and was able to ride smoothly :) Before I would wobble A LOT and it was kind of dangerous for me and pedestrians.. but now I can do it, so yay!!

My babyyyy..it's a lighter pink irl

So a month later, I ended up crashing into this guy head-on. It was my fault though >< It was actually a relatively light crash too because we were both going slowly and I think we tried braking as well. But anyways, part of my brake handle broke :( It still works, but it's just so sad.

I think riding a bike in Shanghai isn't as dangerous as I had thought it was. But I typically only ride through campus or to the station at most, so I try to avoid riding on the roads. I find that typically, cars are good with avoiding you, but obviously they have the right of the way. The only frustrating thing is having to navigate through slow pedestrians/bikers or ones where you can't predict which direction they're going.

I think it was a good investment :) It saves time and most importantly, I've learned how to bike. 

Etude House Incident

Yesterday, I went to the Etude House at West Nanjing Road (南京东路). It was probably the worst experience I've ever had, but given that I never had an AWFUL shopping incident, I think.

Basically, I couldn't find the color of what I wanted so I tried to flag down an employee, but they made eye contact and walked away. After looking through all the products on the shelf and not being able to find it, I tried to actually approach a sales associate. There was like... 7 or 8 of them at the cash register and only one customer was checking out, so even a while after that customer finished, they just loitered around that area and chatted. Which is really stupid because the store was full of customers and ALL the employees were gathered in that corner. It kind of got annoying because I'm like staring them down, but they're too engrossed in their own thing. To prove that they're definitely not busy, this one employee kept going back and forth to a mirror to fix her makeup.

So anyways, I approached them and said I needed help. They looked at me, then looked away and continued their chattering. Wtf?! Wanted to just put the shit down and leave by then cuz they definitely did not deserve my business there >_> But I just stuck it out because if I didn't get it from this store I'd have to go to another location which is just inconvenient for me D: So I asked them again for help and the manager told a girl to help me. 

Got my thing and went to checkout. My total was 77元 and I repeated it back to make sure because I thought one of my items was 18元 and the other 29元, so it definitely didn't add up, but it was just because I misheard it earlier. So they told me to look at the screen for the total. So as I getting my credit card and one of the girls standing there was just like "seven seven" in English, so I'm not sure if it was just mockery or what? Because her tone sounded like that and also I've been speaking to them in Chinese, so at the very least I would think I know my numbers. But because I was speaking English with a friend, they knew I was a foreigner for sure. It's also the fact that the total was right in my face on the screen, so I don't understand why it was necessary for her to do that. 

I don't know how much shipping would cost, but apparently the same product I bought costs $2 on the official site vs 48元 （～$8) so WTF ripped off!! But then shipping might be super expensive, so not sure. Also I might've bought the wrong kind, but I didn't see any other ones at the store.

Anyways, bottom line is...never shopping in that particular Etude House again. They're just rude and inattentive. 

Wuzhen Trip & A Bit of FOMO

This weekend the school arranged a trip with other exchange students to Wuzhen, a canal town 2.5 hour ride away. I only ended up getting 2 hours of sleep, so I was super tired and passed out during the bus ride. 

As for the town, I guess I'll describe it as a less decorative version of Lijiang. It is definitely still very touristy and the prices do reflect that. We kind of just walked around.

We went to this cafe to sit down and just relax for a bit. I ordered a vanilla milkshake for 30¥ but it tasted just like milk wtf D: It wasn't even like the right consistency. 

Walked around some shops and there was this small toy-music shop and they had the prettiest carousels ever D: I was pretty tempted to get one because there was this super pretty pink one, but it was just a bit too big and it was also like 430¥  :(

Umm there was an "incident" when we returned to Shanghai though. Maybe it wasn't meant to be malicious, but.. still quite fucked up. Basically most of the people from my program went to Wuzhen (10 of us) and when we got back to Shanghai, they all went to get dinner together, except they didn't invite me or my friend (we were sitting together on the bus). We only found out because after getting off the bus, we saw them all going the other direction to get dinner. Not only that, but before we got off, my friend's roommate had given her a bag of things she purchased and asked her to bring it back to the room first. So if "everyone" was going to get dinner, why is it assumed that she was going back first..? Ehh? To make matters worse, they all came back with takeout to eat at my friend's place >_> Which is SO awkward and just awful >:(

It's not even a matter of being cliquey either because the WHOLE group went, so it's not like a few of them decided to get dinner together afterwards.

Later that night, they all went out to the Bund to see it at night. It's definitely like a very common activity to do, but it's like.. last time when I was going to go I invited some of them to go but we ended up not going because it was raining. But then this time they didn't even bother to extend the invitation back. It wasn't too out of the way either because we exchanged conversations like, "Oh where are you going?"

Ugh.

A Journey to Become an Expert Bargainer

The agenda of the day was to visit Han City (Fake Market) for rain boots and the fabric market. 

小笼包 and shrimp wontons for lunch. 20¥ for this, which I thought wasn't too worth it since you can get a bigger, more filling meal with that amount of money. But it was still good. 

On our way to the train station, we passed by this shoe shop, so we went in and I ended up buying these for 39¥, which is pretty cheap. I just hope it lasts for the semester and won't be too uncomfortable. It's slight uncomfortable now trying to break into it because I had wide feet :(

So..Han City is at 580 Nanjing Rd (W), but we made a mistake and couldn't check to confirm, but we thought it was East, so we walked down one direction and after 20 minutes, we were in an unfamiliar place (since we were there two days before) so we walked back towards the starting point, and I think halfway back we walked back again before going back to the starting point, only to walked the other direction, but we ended up at the Bund, which wasn't right either, so we walked back again. 

Then we finally went to this tourist center and asked. Turns out where we stopped and turned back the first time was pretty much where we had to be, but we didn't cross the road we were supposed to (and it was less than a 5 minute walk from there. But had we gotten off at the right station, it was also within a five minute walk and we wouldn't have had to walk around back and forth so much. 

We finally reached there around 6:00PM and we had left the apartment around 1:45PM..

Anyways, we were already pretty familiar with how everything is, so we tried our best to haggle our way D: I think we got everything for a pretty standard price, though maybe we coulda done better. 

Han City has a bunch of handbags, luggage totes, scarves, shoes, electronic accessories, clothing (traditional and modern), sunglasses, glasses (they can do prescriptions there and then too), etc. Haggling is a must and if you walk away, vendors normally chase after you offering a lower price. Even if they don't chase after you or give you a price you set, another vendor might. For example, the lowest I was able to get a laptop case was 30¥, but some vendors pretty much make 50¥+ as the final deal and I just walked away because the last time I was there, I knew I could get it for less than that. Not to mention, since stalls have practically the same thing, if you can't get it one place, you can definitely get it at another. Even though I do believe that all the vendors work together to some extent. 

Macbook Air cover 30¥

Harajuku Lovers backpack 115¥

Hunter Boots 125¥

Can't comment on the quality of the stuff yet, but hopefully it's decent. Was kind of iffy about buying knockoffs, but with the bag, I wanted a cute one for class and it was pretty hard to find one that wasn't plain and the boots.. I really just needed rain boots and the price wasn't too bad. Couldn't really find any rain boots elsewhere. I wonder legit it looks though o_O

It was a fun experience. Ended the night at a local bar. My drink tastes just like juice though.

Sichuan Food and a Night In

August 29, 2014

Had a morning meeting for orientation about the internships and upcoming trip to Yunnan. It was raining and I still didn't have an umbrella yet :( We met up relatively early but still ended up late walking to the building. My shoes were killing my foot because it was cutting through the back of my foot. 

Afterwards, we had lunch at a Sichuan restaurant.

Even though this was just cabbage, it was my favorite dish because it had that very very slight burnt taste to it that made it yummy.

Went to Walmart at 五角场 to look for new sneakers and boots for the trip (because we'll be hiking), but couldn't find any :| Ended up buying some necessities, like toilet paper, slippers, snacks, etc. 

Got back and was kinda tired already. The group were planning on going out downtown to, and I ended up staying in instead. I heard from my roommate it was really weird though, like full of German students, fake alcohol, and people leaving early. She was back home before 1:00AM and she left around 10:30PM...so it didn't seem to last long considering it was a ~30 minute cab ride.

Wasn't much of an eventful day.. since orientation is starting to wind down.