China Journals 2: No Lumpia?!

Monday; April 24, 2006

• No food stub?!
• Kung-fu
• Doctor, doctor I am sick?
• Underground activity, something fishy
• To Beijing we will go
• The Coach

Wake-up call: 7am. OH MY GOD! I lost my meal ticket! Good thing that the Chinese family we're with (Pander and her 2 sons) convinced the waitress to give us our breakfast. For breakfast we had 4 different kinds of siopao, hard-boiled eggs, hot orange juice, tea and bland coffee and I almost forgot, pechay. Allan has the day planned, it was a city tour. Shanghai by the way is the central business district of China, much like Makati. Almost every building there was taller than the tallest building here in our country. Each one was an architectural masterpiece. All unique, some queer. LOL.

On one of the parks there, we had a grand picture taking. The place was very nice. They call it a French-inspired park. Me and my sis had a great time doing jumping poses and matrix-inspired shots. After consuming much of my 1GB camera’s memory, we went to this wellness center to have our free foot spa. YEY! It was actually another sales talk in disguise. After we got a refresher course on herbal medicine and other Chinese medical methods, we were again urged, coerced to buy their product. This was done after the resident doctor read our pulse and sublimely told us that we’re gonna die if we don’t buy their product. BRRRR…

We had lunch after that with the same menu. This time minus one pechay dish but plus another onion viand. We went to an underground market following the vegetarian lunch. Nothing much to see there. Rolex watches selling for 8 pieces per 100 RMB. We had dinner 3 hours after we had lunch. Nothing new, pechay and meatballs again. After that it’s straight to the airport.

At Beijing, a tall athletic guy (judging by the way he dress: sports jacket, jogging pants and rubber shoes with matching bottle of mineral water) welcomed us. “Ha, I’m Frenk. I’ll be your tu guide here in Bejing.” His English proficiency was 2 notches lower than Allan and Ting. It was really hard to understand. Along the 1 hour trip top the hotel, he introduced himself. He used to work in a Scandinavian country (I forgot where exactly) but he retired to pursue his passion for talking and traveling. Wrong choice Wang!