Back at the Howard Johnson

So far there is no mosquito, any bears and the buffalo are still roaming.

Yesterday was as close to a horror story as you can get without actual horror happening.

The hardest thing about living in Shanghai as budget people is the taxi travel. You never know how much time to plan for travel. How long will the elevator take, how long to get a taxi, how nasty will traffic be? Yesterday nothing took any extra time and we arrived at the train station an hour and a half early. Then we discovered our train was delayed 30 minutes. The train station is not a great place to hang out. We decided to try the Chinese restaurant and sit a spell. Yuck. Everything was horrible. When the waitress finally took our order she said no to everything we picked out. Finally she showed us the one thing we could order. The nasty, greasy, al dente fried rice.

There are no washrooms at the train station unless you are the most desperate person on earth.

We finally get through the ticket taker and make it downstairs to the train platform and there is no train. So everyone lines up at their car number and hangs out. Chinese hanging out consists of pushing and shoving to get closer to being first in line. I think this is slightly dangerous on a train platform.  When the train arrives it stops at a different spot than normal and everyone surges to the right to re-fight for their number one spot.

Entertain for this trip involved a shouting match and various personal grooming lessons. There was a guy sitting with friends without a proper ticket. That was the shouting match. It was fairly lengthy and he won. The train attendant reported him to various train staff and police men at the different stops, but no one ever approved him. So he sat there with this purple sunglasses and picked his nose and flicked it for a couple hours. These people can be filthy. Right behind him sat a lady that thought she was in her personal boudoir. She acted like a movie star, taking 30 minutes before she was satisfied  with how she was sitting. Up and down constantly re-arranging her shawl. Then she proceeded to rub lotion on every visible surface and give herself a massage. She was a big girl so there was quite a bit of flesh to rub.

There was a little excitement in my world. I had room service as Big Daddy had to work late and when they brought the tray . . . there were packets of ketchup, salt and black pepper. I almost cried. Those are very hard condiments to get here.

Once again Big Daddy misses the Kodak moment

We took train home from BFE Sunday afternoon. Fountains that never worked were splish splashing in all their glory while the rains came down. Peng Quan, or phonetically Pun Trank, means fountain. New word of the week I will never use again in a sentence. It is so Chinese to turn the fountains on only when it rains.

I made a new friend, Daisy. If you take the business card you are now friends. And she likes reading the books I leave at the hotel. When I travel I always have books and I try to travel only with books I can leave when I am finished reading them. So now BFE is becoming filled with literature picked out by a person who will read a cereal box if I am desperate. We order all the best sellers we can tolerate every few weeks. We order our favorite authors if they write anything new. We order whatever else we think won't make us puke.  China is now filled with everything from James Patterson to Sarah Palin. The only one neither of us can read was the last Tom Clancy and we were really looking forward to it, but it is Clancy on LSD and I just can't read it. South of Broad by Pat Conroy was fabulous.

Anyway, we get on the train and life is good. Until shortly before we arrive in Shanghai. I was kinda thinking about going to the restroom to pee but that is not a pretty sight at the end of the 4 hour train ride. Then I smell this overwhelming odor that smells just like urine. BAD. I asked Big Daddy if he could smell it and he did wrinkle his cute nose. He got up to go stand at the back with his bags as he was tired of sitting and he could not pass down the aisle as there were shrimp and clams laying on the floor of train being sorted and bagged. Yep, right on the floor where people walk with their peepee shoes.

 Is this not a Kodak moment?

Lets give it a try:

Hooray!  The year of the Rabbit.

I am too embarrassed to tell you how I figured out how to post pictures again.

This is the lobby of the Best Western in Shenzhen decorated for the Lunar New Year.

Oh, well does not want let me post another pic so I will have to practice.

If I had known I could do this I should have taken pictures of the awful Toad in the hole from my last post. It was disgusting.

Or I could have taken a picture of the French dip we made from scratch-braised on the stove top for about 7 hours. It was wonderful.

It is somewhat back to normal here, CNN only goes out about every hour, Internet only goes out for a few seconds at a time. It is a pain but not as bad as going out for hours. Although I am now out of reading material and bad movies. I hate it when I am out of books.

Frenchy went home and BD told me why he was so upset about shitting like a dog. He had intestional issues. No one told him not to drink the water. WTF. Seems BD and Frenchy went to the break room together and he filled up his cup from the sink and BD screamed something like ARE YOU CRAZY???  Then the dude has the nerve to say he wondered why such a nice hotel had a sign in the bathroom not to drink the water. Don't you think you might question your co-workers about this? Hmm, don't drink the water only at the very nice hotel? Did he just think everyone was a water snob with the plastic bottles? Of course, the crazy wine probably did not help either.

Finally found a great French restaurant for home delivery. Most everything has been great and they have profiteroles with ice cream and decent chocolate. Desserts are hard to find here that are tasty. And not green. We have had so much duck the last couple weeks I am starting to quack.

BD found this place to order meats and even dinner (more duck) and now the guy is negotiating to see if he can get andoulle (sp) sausage shipped here. If not he is going to get his chef to make it on a smoker he is going to get, I am so damn excited. Normal sausage maybe. Damn.

Well, still foggy, smoggy, and cold. We had a nice day on Saturday and that was that. Well I need to practice with the pictures, so bye for now.

Something is wrong with the Internet

Either the sun flares or the Great Wall, not sure. Huge problems this week.

Home alone and laughing at Big Daddy's report on the French dude and his reaction to his first visit to China and his visit to the shithole town they are working in this week.

He does not like the whirly twirly dinners that take hours. This is where they put a lot of food on a lazy susan in the middle of the table and everyone sticks their nasty chopsticks in and gets their food. Yep, no serving utensils.

He does not like having to shit like a dog in the factory toilets, this is the ceramic hole in the floor.

He does not like that their is no heat. And the dock bay doors are left open for a nice breeze. The Chinese lady that works for the company is fond of telling everyone how "it" is a great Chinese tradition for 2000 years. He asked her why they couldn't figure out how to turn on the heat for 2000 years.

Hilarious part is he planned this trip with no input and wanted to act the big shit and now he is stuck there no matter what as there is no way out with the students on the trains. I used to love it when people came to visit and acted the smartass and I just let them fall in the hole and stood there and watched. But my people could always leave.

BD said the government shut the electricity off 3 times today. I told him to call me when the Frenchy starts to whimper.

Perfect Toilet Training

All my past efforts finally came together in the perfect toilet experience. At the A and B market. Had my own paper. Had my own antibacterial hand wipes. Hooray. Also did not have to squat which was fabulous. Funny how little things can make your day.

Old crown in starting to crumble so I may have to call and make an appointment before I get to New Orleans. Not looking forward to trying to squeeze in more things to do in a short time frame. Two crowns in two months.

Have to go shopping for boring items. Yuk.

Off to the City Market after we watch Ray Nagin on CNN Reveal. Also Watsons and maybe Sephora.

Hair on waking up: not too bad. More later today. Cool but sunny.