lunch munch

Another food related post, here is what we have been eating for lunch the past few months. We use dining cards which we have to fill with our own money despite being told we would be provided with 10 rmb a day to eat (it's being paid back to us in the end). Ford has a huge cafeteria that serves several things such as ramen and several combinations of hot dishes with rice. You can either get a complete meal that comes with rice and soup, or buy dishes separately. The complete meal is 12 - 13 rmb so we stick with buying dishes separately. I like getting sweet and sour pork (I know probably the most American dish) or eggs with tomatoes. Lunch used to be the best meal of the day when we first came as breakfast sucked and we wern't good at getting dinner (read: lots of cup noodles). Now we're kind of sick of it.

Hot week pt 1 - Beijing

We got a week off from work, something everyone refers to "hot weather week" even though the week is really interchangeable (it was originally scheduled for the week after we leave our internship). We decided to go to Beijing and Shanghai for our week off. We took a 4 day tour in Beijing and explored Shanghai on our own for 3 days.

The tour in Beijing took us to all the famous sight, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, Summer Palace, along with some "shopping tourist traps" but we avoided buying anything. It was supposed to be a group tour but we only met new people on the day we went to the great wall. We met an older man named Nigel from Australia (he was raised in a bunch of places and can speak Spanish and French), he was in China doing some consultant work for mining. We also met a guy named Rico from Portugal that works for the shoe company Ecco.

Tianamen Square

Forbidden Palace

Temple of Heaven

The tour quality was okay, a little rushed and our guides English wasn't that great and he smoked all the time, but you get what you pay for. The hotel we stayed at was amazing though (it had a window! our hotel doesn't have a window and you can never tell what time of day it is, its rather depressing), and it had the BEST breakfast buffet ever. Considering we struggle with eating this might of been our favorite part of the day, its a lot easier waking up at 6 if you know that you have good food waiting on you.

On our own time we explored a lot of the famous "fake markets" that sell tons of fake merchandise from Ralph Polo shirts, LV, Gucci, Prada bags, fake beats headphones, you name it they have it. These market merchants are famous for inflating the prices about 500%, especially since many foreigners visit. You have to play a rather intense bargaining game with them by pitching about 10% of the price and working up to the maximum your willing to pay. The shop owners act all scandalized and annoyed with you but if you walk away when they don't give you your price they eventually cave in. Makes me wonder how much all of the stuff originally costs, if they're willing to cut down so much on the price. I personally find it really fun watching a foreigner giving a Chinese shop owner a hard time with bargaining instead of being ripped off (I guess I tend to think everyone here wants to take advantage of you so its nice to see people stick up for themselves)



Beijing isn't what I expected it to be for a capital city. It's less metropolis than I expected and more of an awkwardly placed mix of cultural sites and a sort of old run down city. I'd like to come back and have more time to explore the famous sites like the Summer Palace, and learn a little more from an audio guide rather than a sub par tour guide.

why we're hungry

I haven't been posting much food on here so let me give you a run down of our breakfast. We eat at the hotels daily breakfast buffet which is not very good to begin with and after the first week we were already sick of it. Its been 6 weeks now.  Anyways, they have an assortment of typical greasy Chinese food (noodles, vegetables, mantou ), except all of it is mixed with chili peppers which really limits down what I can personally stand. They usually have watermelon but we don't have much time in the morning and its not always out. The drink machine only 3 types of drinks, watery coffee, really sweet powdered milk, and orange aide all of which are both gross and hot (orange aide is especially nasty when hot). Most of the food is pretty greasy as well. I've gotten used to just eating a little bowl of veggies and drinking a lot of water to fill my stomach.

mmmmmm................

ugh

We get next week off from work because apparently it's "hot week vacation", and I can see why if its going to be as bad as this week.

pandas pandas pandas

This weekend we made the trip out to Cheng Du to visit the famous Panda Base, which is a breeding and conservation park for Giant Pandas and Red Pandas. We had to take a high speed rail for 2 hours to Cheng Du then the subway and bus to the base so it took about 4 hours in total.  Unfortunately was pouring so all of the Giant panda's stayed in doors, but we did get to see red pandas outside (I think they're cuter anyways). The base looked like a large bamboo forest and had a lake with black swans and tons of koi. Apparently if you pay some money you can take pictures with baby pandas but we didn't find it (I think they don't have any pandas of  holding age right now). I just wanted to steal a red panda its so cute!

Bagnut?

While y'all cry over Cronuts in New York (they do look delicious), Hillary was feeling deprived of American sweets and wanted a simple doughnut (all the cake here is a kind of sponge cake, so we really miss the richer American sweets). So we went to the local bread store and picked up what was labeled a "vanilla doughnut".





But alas, similar to this whole trip so far, things were not as they seemed as the donut was not a donut, but instead a bagel cut in half with some kind of vanilla flavored cream spread between.

It wasn't that bad tasting. but when you were expecting a doughnut it was kind of gross. We really aren't sure what was in between the bagel slices but we do know now to be a little most skeptical with our pastries (as with all other things here).









UPDATE: We went to a doughnut shop called Bapple to try again but didn't have much luck. Chinese doughnuts look pretty but the actual pasty itself is rather dry and stale. It was better tasting than the weird bagel thing though.

Blame it on the Alcohol

So the other day to my dismay I dropped my adorable Hello Kitty pressed compact powder that I got in Taiwan. Many Google searches later I was directed by the wise internet to mix rubbing alcohol into the makeup to remold the compact, as the alcohol evaporates quickly leaving you with one solid piece.

We tried searching for rubbing alcohol at the super market and cosmetic store but found none, so we figured we might as use real alcohol instead (it probably has rubbing alcohol anyways). We bought this 100 ml bottle for 5.8 RMB ($0.95 USD), way to cheap to be safe to drink. It smelled soooo bad something like sake so I guess its made of rice? I was afraid it wouldn't work any my make up would end up smelling gross but thankfully it did the trick.