My revolving door

In the past month (actually just 3 weeks), I've seen a revolving door of visitors. I am super thankful for the company and with these folks, I've gotten to see a lot more of Shanghai. For example, my in-laws & mum led me through some tiny and dark lane to a Hong Kong restaurant that served shioks char siew; with Cat, we went dancing at one of the hottest clubs with one of the hottest visiting DJs (Steve Aoki anyone?) in town; and with Lianne, we walked miles along Changle Lu and Shanxi Lu and came across HoF, a fabulous dessert bar that is consistently rated the best in Shanghai and visited Sun Yat-Sen's home.

My parents above, my in-laws below, in Hangzhou.

First to arrive were the parents. MIL was supposed to come and cook but all that went out the window when her curry paste was confiscated at Changi Airport.  For the two weeks that they were here, they were out EVERYDAY, from noon to night. I don't mean to be the adult here, but seriously?! Sometimes I didn't even know if they were coming home.

Then they upped and ran off to Wuxi themselves, and forgot to call me when they arrived there. And the day they arrived back from Wuxi, they went out again!  Parents these days....



The dads in contemplative moods
 (actually I suspect they were just thinking about what to order at dinner)

  



Next up was Cat. Poor girl had to be fostered with someone else because there were just too many people in my house (sorry meow!). But with her, we explored Qi Pu road, with some of the finds from the previous post.  With her, we also tried to bargain down to 40% of the stated price and got pushed and cursed out of the shop... ha ha...

More interestingly, we went to the cool club with the hot (as in supposedly happening, not handsome) DJ that I was talking about earlier. And boy were we bored. The nutty DJ (pale and skinny Jap with long hair and a goatee) sprayed Moet (who sprays MOET randomly!) on the crowd on the dancefloor and then he drank it and SPAT on them, China style. Thank goodness we were watching the whole horrific scene unfold from the second level. The crowd was standing armpit to armpit (because they had their arms up all the time) and it was just.... not Mambo.

 




自拍 queens



And finally, Lianne came. We did the usual tourist stuff and then some. Super siong and yet rewarding was probably the trek down Changle Lu then Shanxi Lu then back on Changle Lu. With her, we discovered some innocuous heritage site (again hidden amongst a street of shops), went to the Book City, snooped around Jing'An Villa and found Feiyue heaven.  And we had the funniest (!!!) adventure on a three person motorbike (aka tuk tuk) but that's a story for another day.



Say fishballs!

Thanks to them, living in Shanghai has become a lot more of an adventure. I've forgotten what it is to be lonely and it has been great coming home to a house full of other people's clothes and shopping (including my dad-in-law's 400RMB KITE! Don't ask.).  I think they all left loving Shanghai and finding that the city offers up a little more each day.

But I'm also looking forward so some me-time in the house, alone, vege-ing out, ordering take-out and generally just stoning instead of roaming the streets of Shanghai everyday. Maybe I'm really ready to be alone? Say only la cos Edwin is coming up next week... woo hooo!

  

xoxo,

Tracy



Mummy and me