Shanghai was the last stop on our Awesome Friend’s Asiacation™ and my last chance to convince 6 Americans to toss out their passports and stay with me in Asia forever and ever. (joking mom, don’t freak out) And on this leg of the trip, I even had the help of 3 of the coolest and most creative expats in the world. They spent a solid 5 days showing us the most amazing, charming and interesting places in Shanghai.
The first night the took us to Hot Pot. It’s kinda like fondue but instead of chocolate or cheese, you dip stuff in boiling oil and water flavored in Chinese things. I’d like to elaborate on what those things are, but I haven’t a clue. Our Shanghai sales team told stories of how delicious the blood clot was. I was so excited to try it that I made up a “Do the blood clot” song and dance (which may of been inspired by wine and sleep deprivation). But, on the night of the big Hot Pot, we chickened out and the craziest thing I ate was a frog’s leg. I’m from Southern Illinois, so that’s nothing too exotic even for my low brow taste buds.
The second night they took us to The Bund for an awesome 14 year old’s birthday. Seriously, this is the most impressive skyline I have ever seen with tons of buildings flashing, blinking and changing into every color of the rainbow and boats floating by all strung up with even more beautiful lights.
The following day, they hired a guide to give us a private tour of the Shanghai French Concession.A really beautiful part of the city that gave us an amazing background on the culture and the architecture, followed by the most amazing Chinese food I’ve ever had. After the hired guide went home, Kathy showed us a local grocery market, a pet shop, the Shanghai Dongtai road Antique Market and the Propaganda Museum. I don’t know how much we paid the professional guide, but Kathy deserved 10x more. Here are a whole bunch of pics from that incredible day.
The last day they took us to an old water town village about 2 hours north of Shanghai. I’m totally blanking on the name right now but will update the details later. This was probably my favorite part of the whole trip and not just because of the Sex Museum. But we’ll start with pictures of that because that’s the first place we hit up once we arrived.
Keeping it classy.
A bunny, in a sex museum. Come on! Go ahead and try and me Kevin, leader of the Shanghai sales team, had nothing to do with that.
After Jillian and I recovered from a serious case of the giggles, we headed towards the river to explore more wholesome parts town and grab a bite to eat. The rest of the pictures are from everything we encountered along the way.
While we ate, the tourists became the attraction. Everyone stopped and stared at us. Now I know what it feels like to be famous.
A pile of roof tiles. Hey, that rhymes!
These are Cormorants, a type of bird that is trained to dive down into the water and catch a fish and bring it back up for humans to eat. The fishermen tie a cord around the bird’s necks to keep them from swallowing the fish. Can you imagine running into Lou Malnatis, grabbing a slice of pizza with your mouth, and then having to give it to someone else? Once the sweet combination of pepperoni, mozzarella and tomatoes hits my tongue, I’m not letting go. So I understood when one bird didn’t want hand over his catch. The bird’s master, however, wasn’t as empathetic and we watched in horror as he received a beating. Not cool, Chinese fisherman.
These guys pointed at me, called me beautiful and asked me to get in their boat. I’m guessing they’re on the Shanghai sales team’s payroll.
On the way home from the water town we got a flat tire. But thanks to the quickest road safety team ever, we made it back to our castle safely. Yes, that’s right. The whole time in Shanghai we stayed in a Mother Villa castle . which a Swedish dude built for his daughter back in 1936 because she really liked fairy tales.
The last night, we went to Tianzifang which when pronounced kinda sounds like Tons of Fun (I think). Here you could wander aimlessly for hours and hours through a labyrinthine of alleyway shops filled with food, jewelry, art and pretty much anything you can imagine. Tons of fun if you ask me.
I gotta say, the Lynchs really sold the hell out of China as an amazing place to live. I totally bought it. So did my friend Lynn. But we both already live in Asia. So, while my operation to convince 6 of the most amazing friends in the world to move to Asia was an epic fail, these 14 days will definitely go down in history as some of my favorite.
Thanks for the memories, friends.
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