Thursday, June 29

the hotel woke us up (wake up call) at 9AM in the morning... usually, i slightly wake up when the sun comes up (at like 5 in the morning here... stupid lack of daylight savings time!!!)... but the curtains at the hyatt are freaking super curtains - blocks out ALL the time!!! ... it was amazing... so i was really groggy in the morning... i think we finally got downstairs to the food place at like 9:45 (they close at 10:30). their selection was AMAZING. ... since it was the Hyatt, there were white-ppl-food - i.e. eggs, toast, jam, potato cake things (yum), sausages, bacon, etc. they also had italian bread with salami and some other kinda meat thing, and capers and dijon, and stuff like that to make urself a mini sandwich with no veggies. ... but my favourite, they had banana walnut bread - and it was YUMMY!! ... i think i like any kinda bread with walnuts in it now... mmm... so yummm.... they had danishes too. that's the white-ppl-food-side. now for the chinese food: Youtiao (but it was hard and not good), Little dumplings (shanghainese: 'shiao wen done'), salty [and swet] soy bean milk (it's all self-serve, so u can either add sugar or all the stuff u need for the salty one... or both, but that'd be nasty. :P) ... and they had congee there too, with like a MILLION (okay, like 15ish) different "jiang cai" (preserved veggies) and "dou fu ru" (uh... fermented tofu blocks? little tofu blocks... ppl call it 'chinese cheese' cuz it slightly smells, sorta like cheese but it doesn't smell like cheese, totally different...) to pick from. DouFuRu alone, there were like 5 different kinds - the rose one i loooove, and other ones too. WOW!!!! they also had FRESH milk. ... oh, billy, u would've drank the entire freaking jug. it was soooooooooooo yummy!!! ... did i already make a note about the milk in china? i dunno... but i'll make it again if i didn't already cuz i feel very strongly about it .... china now, sells two main categories of milk - refridgerated, and not. (plus they have sour milk [i.e. drinkable yogurt], etc... but those are different, not included in my super categories) ... the non-refridgerated milk comes in a bag, and u cut it open and drink it, and if u can't finish it, u put it in the fridge. that stuff tastes like melted plastic. it's so very very very very nasty. (and that's all that's in cassandra's fridge... *shudder*) ... the other type is the stuff u actually need to put in the fridge!!! there are a few varieties of those, but billy, get the one that says "xian" (i.e. fresh) on it. brand is "guang ming". it tastes ALMOST as good as the milk we used to have when we were little.... some ppl (i.e. maybe ur aunts) get milk delivered to their place in glass bottles - if it's not "guang ming" and it's not the "xian niu nai", don't drink it - it tastes like milk + salt. pretty damn nasty. so now u know. ... the milk at the Hyatt tho, was just as good as the milk we used to have when we were little ... i actually savoured the taste of the milk ... which we never do in north america... ANYWAYS. hyatt breakfast also had this roadside food thing that i got once on the road, in shanghai (it's like a crepe with some black sauce and hot sauce, and chinese parsley and chives and either a "you tiao" or a "you bin") ... but the one at the hyatt was nasty. they also had freshly squeezed orange juice, grapefruit juice, honeydew, cucumber, etc juices. .... and fruits. ... yes, it was a wonderous breakfast... but it had better been for $55CDN for two ppl!!!!! ... so that was breakfast.

after breakfast, we went to the West Lake (about a one minute walk), walked around for a bit, saw a tree that was "smoking" for some reason, walked towards it, realized that it was actually little BUGS that were coming out from the top of this particular tree (none of the other trees were "smoking"), and ran. ... my JJ also took some pics of me. then, my JJ was tired, so we hailed a cab, and it drove us all the way around the lake, and the driver was really nice, explaining stuff to us, etc. But i couldn't find my mom's old place... *sniff* ... i saw it last time, but it was nasty last time... i think it's prolly nicer now, since all of the West Lake is nicer now... dunno...

In the end, the taxi brought us to the bottom of LeiFenTa (LeiFeng tower) - there's a pedestrian-only street there. it's a tourist trap, but we were tourists, so shopping was great there!!!! :D ... i bought sooooooooooooooo much stuff, my bag was soooooooooooo heavy and painful!!!! ... the bestest store was this tibetan store that had a whole crapload of jewellry and everything and it was sooooooooooo nice, and spent like 300yuan in there, which really isn't a lot, but it is a lot for that store!!! i also bought a stamp thingy, and some tea. ... tea leaves are supposed to rubbed by hand to make 'em dry... did u know that? i didn't... but i saw them do it. it was cool. and tea smells great. i bought some "Long Jin" tea which is a specialty of Hangzhou. LongJing is a mountain in/near Hangzhou ... the leaves from the tea trees there are called "Long Jin" tea when dried. it's a green tea. - all this stuff i just learned. :P

after i lugged my HUGE and really heavy bag from one end of the street to the other, my JJ was tired, so we hailed a cab for all of, let's see 200 meters? ... literally, across the street, and 10yuan to the restaurant. it was called something-something-HongLou ("red building"). it's the best restaurant in hangzhou. it was yum. My JJ ordered this crab soup thing that was yummy, and "xiao tian dou" [little sweet peas] which was yummy. and also this chicken feet thing that was really spicy, that she really liked, but i don't like it at all... (it's not red, it's white,... but really really spicy) ... she also ordered they have good "drunken shrimp" which is live shrimp that are put in some sorta alcohol... when they give it to u, don't open it the foil right away, cuz they're still not completely out of it ... wait awhile, shake the vessel, and when u don't hear shrimpies thrashing around for their lives, then open the foil. sounds appetizing, doesn't it? ... but it was!! it was really yum!! technically tho, they're alive when u eat them, but they're uber drunk... so they don't move - thank god!!! i was sooooooooo scared of them. ... my JJ said that one of her friends ONLY likes to eat them when they're still moving - how nasty is that huh??

so after lunch, we went back to the hotel, where my JJ took a nap, while i took a bath, yes a BATH (i never take baths), and then a shower and then i watched "The Whole Ten yards" on TV. there were three movie channels there - YAY! plus CNN plus that all day NBC news channel too, and the Discovery channel. ... but of course, all chinese versions of those channels... i.e. chinese versions, but not in chinese... but content-wise, geared towards expats in china, and of course content-filtered ot suit the needs of the chinese communist party. ... anyways, when she woke up, we got ready to go out with my JJ's cop friend, who very very obviously likes her... she's too pretty, every single guy likes her.

so, we went to this one restaurant but half of their menu was cancelled... i.e. they put a sticker there that says "sold out" pretty much. side note: in china, this is common... the menus in these big and nice restaurants are HUUUUUGE! and when u see smt u like and order it, a lot of the time, they'll say "we don't have that now" ... it's soooo annoying. .... back to blog. so, everything my JJ would've possibly ordered were "sold out", soshe decided that we would leave. the cop friend (dunno his name) called one of his friends and he recommended this hole in the wall place near the Hyatt. so we went there. ... in Shanghai, u're not allowed to sell live chickens for fear of the avian flu - great idea, i think. But in hangzhou, that ain't a problem. so there were 2 caged cocks (hehehee... fine, male chickens) in front of this restaurant, along with all their seafood etc - it's really cool. the cocks were really fat, and by the time we came outta the restaurant, one of them was mising. hahahahaa!!!!! it was eaten!!!! okay, not so funny... anyways. when u come to china, and u go to a restaurant that has buckets of live seafood in front of the store, u know not only that the seafood is fresh (cuz u can sea it, stupid. don't get the stuff that looks dead stupid), but that ... n/m i forgot my second point.... anyways, if u goto these restaurant, u hafta order the food right then and there. it's pretty cool. ... what next? let's see... so ya, after dinner, we went back to the Hyatt, where my JJ paid for the train ticket home tomorrow, and i went on the itnernet for all of 2 minutes.... then i went upstairs to get my JJ's cell phone cuz she forgot it, but the access card wasn't accessing the door, so i had to go ALL the way back down to tell my JJ (find her first), and then we had to re-activate our cards, and then i went all the way upstairs again. so stupid... but anyway. finally, we went to the bar in the Hyatt... i had a coconut something or other (it has alcohol in it, i'm no wimp. :P), and my JJ had some mango thing... while the cop dude had nothing. i ain't no wimp! :P ... then my JJ ordered a bottle of french wine, and then some calamari that the cute bar dude recommended, but it was crappy calamari rings (i tried some. i actually tried some. go me!!! oh! at the restaurant for dinner, i actually had some "huang ni luo" or smt like that ... [shanghainese: "wang ni lu"] ... but it was fresh, not the salty kind... it was pretty good!!! tasted like snails, yum!!!) ... anyway, then we ordered a fruit platter, that had this nastiness fruit on it... it's sorta like kiwis, but it's white, and the seeds are spread out all over instead of near the middle. and kiwis taste a shitload better. this stuff has a red hard outer coat, and it tastes like air. texture ain't great either... i highly do not reocmmend this fruit that i know not the name of. ... anyways, we talked... about the tiananmen square massacre (chinese ppl don't know too much about it... i wonder why), and about nightclubs, etc... so, our "clubbing" = Disco here. and my literal translation of nightclub ("ye zong hui") here = place where slutty girls "pei jiu" [basically drink alcohol with] perverted customers, who then can pay the chika to "leave" with them to *cough*. ... so, i kept on saying "ye zong hui", and that i went there, etc etc etc, not knowing that i was saying the wrong thing, and seeing the shocked look on my JJs ... then we realized my mistka.e :P ... finally, we went back to the hotel and slept in the comfy bed.