I started today by not going to breakfast. I instead went to the Starbucks down the street for a boiling hot cup of coffee.
I have not had a “real” cup of coffee in over 3 weeks. It’s just so hot here, coffee is the last thing I have wanted.
So, yes, Starbuck looks exactly the same here. Except for the Chinese signage.
And I must say, it was the very first thing that tasted EXACTLY the same as it does in the U.S. They have to be using bottled water.
I sat there for about 20 minutes – waiting for the coffee to cool to a sip-able state. I only drank about half because I wanted to get on with my day.
Rode my bike to the boardwalk-ish area where I knew there were some tourist shops.
On the way, I stopped at the big red statue thing to take another photo because I now know what it is.
Well, I don’t know what the statue is named, but I do know it is on the May 4th Square – which was named after a nationwide protest. (?)
I then made it to the market area and found a fence to lock my bike to. Walked around and was yelled at by 100s of vendors begging me to look at their stuff. There were easily over 100 places – think flea market stalls. But as I walked along, I realized each place had the same stuff.
I did buy a few things – spent about an hour there.
Went back to the hotel and decided to eat lunch there since I didn’t eat breakfast. I had the buffet – which is basically the only option anywhere. They had chicken & pork kebabs and since it was raw, I could indeed identify it. So I had them grill me some. Also had some rice and cucumbers. I poured soy sauce on my rice, only to find out it basalmic vinegar. Surprise!
I didn’t end up eating the meat because it was undercooked. So basically, I had cucumbers and Pepsi.
Got to work around 1:15. Sailing had been delayed due to lack of wind. Rumor was, they weren’t going to sail at all today. But the races can’t be cancelled until 4pm. So we had to sit and wait.
At some point, I went to the post office which is out on the pier. The postcards I had bought, were pre-stamped for China (.80 yuan). I knew I had to add more postage to get them to the U.S. (it takes 4.5 yuan to get to the U.S.) The last set of post cards I had sent, I simply gave to the concierge at the hotel and paid them to get the postage. Which, after today, I learned was the way to go.
I get into the post office – which is maybe a 12x12 room with 20+ people in it. No A/C. They don’t understand what I am asking for. So I point to the address on one of the post cards – “USA”. They then got it. I paid the difference – which was 3.7 yuan for each card. Is there an easy combination of stamps? Of course not! I am not lying when I say it took 2 girls over 25 minutes to count out the stamps. I had already paid and didn’t know how to tell them forget it and give me the money back. They counted out various combinations of stamps to equal 3.7 yuan. Some postcards have 6 stamps on them! So my apologies if the words are covered up. I had 20 postcards – so it took me another 20 minutes to lick all the stamps.
They were stuck to my hands because I was dripping with sweat. All these people swarmed to see what was going on – the post office girls were all distressed over counting the stamps, so I had people all around me the whole time, pushing to see what was going on. I literally got so fed up, that I started to push them away because they were touching my stamps that I still had to lick.
My shirt was dripping wet by the time I got out of there. So, morale of the story – you all better appreciate those damn post cards!
And who knows if they will ever make it there anyway. All the mail is read before it leaves the country – so I wrote very generic & happy words with hopes they would make it to you.
The envelopes here don’t even have the glue stuff on them. Which is bizarre! I guess it is so everything can be inspected first.
Anyway, the races were cancelled at 4. So I went back to the hotel and watched Slingbox and took a little nap.
I am happy to report – that during my after work shower – I noticed that the mystery hair is gone from the shower wall! Only took 10 days! (Housekeeping must be reading my blog)
This evening, I met up with about 15 people from the crew to go to a Mexican restaurant. We split up into cabs and got the district where it was supposed to be. All we knew was that it was across from the Wal-Mart. Yes, there is a Wal-Mart here
Anyway, 2 people with us speak Chinese, so they kept asking people where the Mexican place was and no one knew. To me, this was a bad sign if the locals didn’t even know where it was.
Eventually, “Z”, went into Wal-Mart to ask in there. Come to find out, it was a Mexican store that sold t-shirts!
So everyone spilt up and went to different places. I was actually ready to eat Chinese, but Christina wanted to go to Pizza Hut, so I went there with her. She was right, at least we knew what we were eating.
Afterwards, we walked around for a while, but it was raining, so we gave up and went back to the hotel.
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