Had a nice day today.
My cold is finnaly gone. I did some gift shopping in the morning and hooked up with Ted outside the bookstore opposite the TeeMall and we went to an Italian restaurant for lunch. It was nice having some western food after weeks of Chinese food it has to be said, the apple pie dessert was very tasty!
I wanted to do some more gift shopping so Ted called his wife for advice as to where would be a good spot as the TeeMall is extremely expensive. His wife suggested Beijing Lu and we were trying to figure out how to get there reading a map I had when a kid came up to us and offered to help which was very kind. He told us which stop to go to on the Metro (Gongyuanqian) and we found it no problems (take exit C at the Gongyuanqian stop and walk about 150 metres straight ahead) and your there.
We went into a traditional clothes shop when we were very pleasantly assaulted by several really pretty ladies that could probably sell oil to the Arabs and snow to the Eskimos. A real fun experience and both Ted and I got gifts for our ladies having barely escaped buying the whole shop up (I might be slightly exaggerating a little here) western shop assistants have a lot to learn abut service form the likes of the Chinese ladies. I hate clothes shopping but these women made it fun for all and they got the sale as a result.
Ted and I strolled around a bit more and I got a pair of gloves for Sunny as she hasn't gotten any and its so damn cold here recently her hands are always ice cold (she loved them). We also checked out a Tibetan store which again had funny attractive shop assistants trying to sell half of Tibet to us, thankfully for me my wallet was near empty so we walked away unscathed this time!
Ted and I headed back to Tiyu Xilu and had some coffee in Victory Plaza Starbucks and relaxed and then parted our ways. Ted , if you are reading this, it was a pleasure meeting you and I look forward to seeing you again if not this visit, definitely on the next one.
When i got back to my hotel i freshened up and headed back out to meet Sunny. As usual the metro during rush hour is nuts, you literally have to shoulder charge your way in to the train and be prepared to be squeezed like a sardines in a tin, I'm used to it by now but when that train pulls into the station i still get that oh crap here we go again felling.
I met Sunny and Yamaha at the Panyue station and Yamaha wanted to bring us to a nice restaurant and we walked in the freezing windy cold for about half an hour, if i'd have known how far and how cold and miserable i'd be by the time we got there i'd have insisted on a taxi. So utterly chilled to the bone we got to the restaurant. It seemed to be mainly a hot pot restaurant. My heart sank, hot pot is a novelty the first time, the second you realise its just you dunking bits of raw food into spicy oil and it just is like cooking at home except it really doesnt taste like much in my opinion. I just walked half an hour , froze my ass off, i was damned if i was going to have to cook a tasteless meal for myself. Sunny saw the look on my face and said did i like hotpot, i just said no and do they have a menu. They did and we had a wonderful meal. I had donkey for the first time (tastes a bit like ham but has a different texture) that you dip into a really spicy black garlic sauce, really good. There was four other courses , beer and rice and it all came to 133 RMB. A great meal and the girls seemed happy to. Sunny and Yamaha chatted for a long time at the end of the meal, Sunny with her hand on my knee kept looking over at me with smiles and it seemed that i was the topic of conversation and it was all good.
After that, we got a taxi and dropped Yamaha home (she lives in the same area as Sunny) and then Sunny brought me to her apartment to meet her colleagues from work that were home and were all curious to meet me. They all had checked out my profile of course on chnlove (two of them are on chnlove) and apparently I'm much better looking than my photo suggests..yeah right..but flattery is always welcome!!That was good fun and apparently tomorrow night they are going to hold a dinner party for me, Sunny apparently really is a good cook and she is going to do the cooking. The way Chinese dinner parties go down is that the ladies first of all decamp to the food market (they dont have a fridge so everything is bought fresh) then depending what ingredients are best value and freshest on the day decides what is cooked, actually i'm looking forward to watching them buy fresh food and then haggling with the seller, i bet they make sure its top quality at the absolute lowest price they can get. It promises to be a fun evening. Sunny gave me a gift of a flower thing that goes on a car dashboard that apparently moves in the sun or something
I have a gift for each remaining day for her to keep things ticking over nicely so looking forward to my last few days here before the inevitable tears on Sunday morning.
