First venture out of Shanghai...

We are counting (or I am at least) down the days till school is done.  No class this week except for Friday for 2.5 hrs.  I know - idiotic but whatever.  Freedom is at our reach!

A few weekends ago, we finally ventured out past Shanghai.  Almost a year here and we haven't stepped outside to see this massive country.  We went to Hangzhou.  It's a province outside of Shanghai known for it's nice mountains and peaceful scenery.  Our trip was sponsored and partially subsidized by hubby's company so they arranged the bus transportation up there.  It was a 3 hour ride that changed into a 4 hour ride, with stops at two rest stops, and one hole-in-the-wall restaurant in some little town in the middle of no where.  Lovely!  Rest stops in China . . . need I say more?  They're similar to the US except that instead of a building with maybe some information about the town, it's like a plaza with a few 7-11 type stores and state-fair type food (i.e., something on a stick, or various Chinese cuisines that are typical of being cooked on a big metal drum that you have no idea how they clean).  The restaurant was awful and when I asked where the bathroom was, I saw that they washed all the dishes in a gigantic metal bowl out back in the alley way.  The dishwashing liquid nearby was a good sign.  The trip the bathroom though was given a bad sign when the woman who came out, told me in Chinese to 'prepare your heart'.  I'm like, "What???"  I walk in and it didn't seem bad - two stalls.  I walked in to find . . . a trough with running water that was flowing through it.  Hubby said, "You don't want to be downstream when in one of those."  Luckily I was alone.

After the unpleasant bus ride, we finally arrive at the Intercontinental Qingdao and it's beautiful.  In fact they had a Ferrari convention that same weekend - so we were greeted by about 9 Ferraris at the entrance.  Qingdao is apparently known for the surrounding lakes and islands.  So hubby signed us up for a tour of the islands the following day - boo! because I wanted to lounge at the beautiful negative edge pool and stare at the mountains.  Many of the islands have themes . . . one was something of a sweetheart island (where lovers could make these metal heart tags with their names and lock it on a chain - akin to locked in love and throwing away the key).  Another island was snake island.  Snakes are my worst fear . . . hate them, hate them.  The name of the island already seemed fishy, snaky, deceitful and it was....  I did not even want to step on the island but sitting on a non-airconditioned boat in 90 degree weather was not inviting either.  The tour guide said we could choose from two activities:  view snakes in the snake pit or the Snake Art Show.  Hubby voted for the "Art Show" but I was really skeptical as to what possibly could a snake do that would constitute a show - they have no hands or feet!  Do they just coil up and down?  Well, the show started with 4 women parading on stage with bright beaded gowns with side slits thigh high.  The center one was fairly attractive but the other three struck me funny.  I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to figure out why they looked "off" to me.  They were transvestites.  It was really clear when one sung a song that sounded like a man and woman duet and the "woman" sung the male part too - in a low voice!  A snake did eventually come on for maybe 2 minutes and it was a great 2 minutes with that cobra and a trainer.  Trainer ended up kissing the cobra on the head and it didn't flinch one bit.  The kids were wondering why I just had this funny look on my face during the show.  I said, "Well, they're really not women, they're men."  More questions shot at me and in the end, the kids decided to call this "dress-up island" instead.

The snake pit was disgusting . . . it was basically a man perched on the side of the railing above the pit, holding a cage full of live mice.  He sounded like a man at the circus trying to sell something and he was trying to get people to pay money to watch him throw a live mice down to the pit full of snakes.  (Cue hurling noises by me).  We quickly left after that.

Our little foray out of Shanghai . . . hmm, makes me want to stay put . . .

A red Ferrari leather handbag!

The Ferrari at the entrance 

View from our hotel window

View from some crazy long hill we had to climb.

This is view of the snake show stage...not the billboard type thing on the right...that should've been our first clue.   Instead we thought it was just an ad or something.