36 days ago
And the night before I left, I came down with some kind of strep throat, fever, flu type thing. I woke up the next morning to get on the plane and it had only gotten worse. I spent the next 22 hours of my life travelling in the most agonizing, never ending prison of pain and suffering that I would not wish upon anyone. I could have been floating in a pool of marshmallows and I still would have been in uncomfortable stress; instead I was locked upright in a coach seat in the back of a 747 passing by the arctic circle. Oh — and they decided to play, through everyone’s earsets and on all the tv screens, Fool’s Gold (starring matthew mconehwhatthefuckhisnameis) to top it all off.
But, I get ahead of myself.
It all started nicely enough: the plane ride there.
And then the view from my hotel.
And this part wasn’t really quite accurate:
Yeah, more like the maglev took you to the farthest subway station away from the city, requiring you to change lines (with all your luggage) several times to get anywhere noteworthy. Brilliant planning for all those travelers coming from, you know, the airport.
While there we went to convenience stores, a lot.
The 40oz beers were seriously like $0.31 a piece. Add to that the complete absence of any kind of open container laws, you end up with a good time walking around.
We visited a temple…
Oh wait that is just all the faux temple built up around it full of people selling cheap chinese crap to you. Ah, here’s the temple.
… which was also full of people trying to sell cheap chinese incense crap to you. Glad to know they keep some things sacred.
Lunches were always served with boiling hot green tea. Nevermind that it was 95 degrees with 100% humidity everyday.
Those receipts were cool though. Anytime you paid for something, the receipts had little scratch off lottery ticket things on them. All of mine said “thank you, try again”.
But, they have pizza huts:
And crazy big shopping malls.
Communism? What communism?
Here I am drinking my communist water bottle…
In front of all those communist built skyscrapers and financial towers. Oi…
We took a ferry ride across the river…
Good to know they forbid explosives. I’m sure those signs keep things safe.
Some of the tallest buildings in the world are there…
As is some of the tastiest food.
Those dumplings were the best dumplings I’ve ever had in my life. But, like french fries, were really only good freshly out of the steamer. Yay for steaming hot food to go with our boiling hot green tea in the middle of the scorching hot day!
But it was worth it.
They had girls who apparently liked english writing but didn’t read or write it themselves. Sucks for them, funny to me.
Ok hon, I’ll try not to breathe you. Thanks for the heads up.
They had many nice parks,
But I doubt this would pass OSHA inspections…
Later, we paid $75 apiece for 1 pint of paulaner
Or at least, $75 chinese dollars. Which is like $10 USD. But, dave says thats still expensive.
We opted to get some more of those $0.30 beers from a convenience store and just walk around instead.
Later I went to the top of one of those tallest buildings in the world.
And looked right down the middle of it.
Glad to know more signs are keeping us safe
Gotta watch out for those psychotics carrying their baleful biology.
We managed to make it to the science and technology museum, which was hands down amazing.
And not even china can escape microsoft’s incompetance.
Hey guys I found china’s nukes!
Just fooling, those are simply models. You think china would just leave their nukes sitting out in a museum? Boy you are gullible.
We ended the trip with a last visit to the Bund.
Where I couldn’t help but admire the sites with good friends.
It was a great time. Well, aside from the flight back. That totally blew. Literally. But the rest of it was fun 
