Another glorious weekend for the books, but one of the last in Shanghai. Even though I have 3.5 weeks left in China, bud I did not book any Beijing tour or shanghai tour when I was traveling in China. I'm spending this weekend in Korea and then next weekend we begin traveling around China with our company. Then the next weekend, I return home on Sunday. Time is really running faster than I can catch it!

At around 11:50, Luia and I went over to the bar to get Kim a birthday shot of tequila. We saw a guy with a microphone, so we asked him if he could give a birthday shout out to the birthday girl. At midnight, we hear a birthday song remix, and so we head over to the dance floor and present Kim with her shot. It was perfect!

Then my friend Ryan comes over to tell me that kids from UCR and UCSD are in the club. We head over to say hi, and next thing you know they are dancing in our circle. Naturally, I get involved in an intense rap battle with this guy named Sam. It was all in good fun, or so I thought. Later he bought me a drink. When we were leaving, he asked me how he could contact me in the states.

The next night was quite an experience for me. Kim surprised us (role reversal!) with a birthday dinner at HOOTER'S!!! I had never been there before, so I didn't know what to expect. Poles maybe? Well, it wasn't really raunchy. The waitresses were all Chinese, so those things had to be fake. But they had robust personalities. It was pretty fun, and they had us go up to dance the macarena and gladly took pictures with us. Mostly American guys were there LOL.

O and we had brought our co-worker Crystal with us. She is just so cute and so much fun to party with, even though this was her first night clubbing at Shanghai (despite being here for almost a month!). We know how to show these Chinese a good time.

After that, we went to a new place we discovered in Xintiandi called GPlus. We called ahead and they said that it was no cover. Of course, we get there and it's 50 rmb per person. HMM. The manager happened to be out there, so I told him about our predicament and how it was my friend's birthday. He said that if I promised to come back and give him my number (for club purposes I reckon), he would let us in free. Voila.

The club was really nice. The dance floor fronted a giant projection screen that had music videos with lyrics and projected images of people on the dance floor! Alas, the techno wasn't enough for some people, so we went clubhopping...back to Muse! oy vey that club tires me. I was willing to stay pretty late for Kim (she was dancing with a Chinese kid we met over spring break hehe), but everyone wanted to go back. And I must admit that it was 3:30 am by that point...

The next day we went to this huge market called Qipu (pronounced Cheap-oo HAHAH). I had gone there Thursday with Luia and I hit a gold mine of clothing--2 dresses, a top, and shorts all for under $20 USD. Saturday I went for the accessories. I got these beautiful hand-made glass pendants, a belt, giant hoop earrings and cherry earrings (literally, plastic cherries dangling from my ears), and a bracelet. This place is AMAZING. When they talk about bargain shopping in China, they mean here.


The girls weren't ready to leave, so I looked over and saw that Babyface owns another club called Richy's. Club hop time. We took a gamble by going to another club on Saturday night that had no cover, but it ended up not being too packed. We had such a fun group there, and we danced the night away.

The next day, we made a cultural trip (cultural Sundays!) to a place called Yu Yuan Gardens. This place is basically a giant shopping complex made in the style of Old Shanghai,right on a pond and next to a sprawling garden area. We started our adventures by eating at a famous shao lin bao place where you could order dumplings that were so large and juicy that you had to use a straw to get all the juices. Heheh so very strange.

Sunday night we were unexpectedly presented with tickets to HAIRSPRAY live here in Shanghai!! Yes, it was in English. No, the actors weren't Chinese. There were, however, subtitles on the side. It was SO friggin good. I'm obsessed all over again. Even though I prefer Zac Efron to Shanghai's Linc, I can still say that the musical was better than the movie (hahah, go figure!).

Then we went to the gardens itself, which were quite gorgeous and peaceful. It was a sprawling area with various ponds and pagodas and pathways and just quiet in general. It would have been a great deal nicer if the weather wasn't so oppressively humid. These past couple of days the weather has been so much nicer--even breezy!--and the skies have been bluer.

All in all, travel in shanghai and booking tours to shanghai will not be a good choice if you are able to speak a little bit Chinese.