Yu Yuan (Yu Gardens)

yu-yuan2
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Last day of vacation is drawing to a close. Conference starts tomorrow morning.

Dinner last night was sauted pork with garlic, red chillis, and red bell peppers. Cantonese, I think, as the place I grabbed it at was a combo Cantonyese / Thai joing. Did some bar hopping in the vicinity of my hotel after dinner. Good fun. Scoped out a few places where I'll likely grab drinks with fellow conf attendees this week. Found an Irish Pub called O'malley's: first place I've been in all of China where Westerners outnumbered locals by about 3 to 1. Mostly Euros there to watch the Wales v. England World Cup football qualifier on the big screen outside. Had a few too many (too expensive) Guinesses and Kilkenneys and stayed there later than I meant too. May go back there tonight for Irish style dinner. T

Today was a busy one. Wandered around the Old Shanghai area. The Yu Gardens are here: absolutely beautiful and quite easy to get lost in, especially without a map. The area around Yu Yuan also has some great souvenier shops and markets, and some excellent food.

Many of you know that I hate to shop, but I would hate it a lot less if this haggling thing were standard fare in the states. The marked price, if there is one, is always way to high. Folks see you looking and offer a 20 percent discount. I've been able to talk them down to 40-60% off the ticket. Seems that this works pretty much everywhere, although stores with no markings will try to get you to offer the price first. You can usually refuse, get them to offer too high and begin talking them down. Often negotiations are done by passing a calculator back and forth. Makes shopping so much more fun.

After wandering about that area for far too long, I grabbed a quick bite to eat: steamed dumplings and some fried bread type stuff with seseame seeds and what seemed like date inside. Then I wandered back up to the Bund, went through the gaudy psychadelic ride that is the Bund Tourist Tunnel under the river to Pudong, wandered around there a bit and took the subway back to my hotel.

I got a hotel account to post photos. .60 Yuan a minute. I managed to post the 6 on flickr in under 5 minutes, so that's not too bad a price. Then I can make my way over to the library (and conference venue) and use their internet room: half hour for 2 Yuan. Should end up being pretty cheap. Can't get to Gmail from here, but can get to yahoo. Also, Anonymouse is back up, so I can read comments again. I'm going to go grab some dinner somewhere. More tomorrow.