Shanghai day 1

Well, the Mrs. and her husband finally arrived in Shanghai at 5pm. We were so excited to see them!! We took a bus home from the airport and dropped their luggage off at the apartment. We took them out to see the Bund, the famous waterfront that separates the two parts of Shanghai. We rode the subway out there and walked along the water. Then we headed to Aji-san for some dumplings and noodles. "This tastes just like the Chinese food in America." Yummm...then we went back to the apartment to rest up for the big day at the museum and Shanyang.

Thailand Day 3

Beep beep went the alarm, again...early morning. Dragged ourselves out of bed around 7am and headed down to our buffet breakfast. Decided that we would go to the US Embassy as soon as it opened. Got there around 8:30 am. After some mass confusion about my pages, which were free probably the highlight of the trip, I took a number and waited for my number to be called. There were about 40 people ahead of me and only two windows. I couldn't believe I had to wait through all of that, so I went to another window, the drop window. I stood by it for a bit, hoping someone would ask me if I needed help, sadly, nobody came. So finally, I just tapped on the window and asked if I could drop it off. Of course! So we left to kill time for about an hour. Around 10, we headed back into the embassy to pick up the passport. Alright! We were ready to head to the Chinese Embassy. I had all of my documents that my employer had given me, just give these to them and pick up your visa. It couldn't really be that easy, could it? So we head over to the Chinese Embassy, getting lost of course in one taxi and having to switch to another. We finally made it, took a number and started filling out the paper work and gluing my picture on it. Of course, in the visa office, it always takes forever. So we were busy filling out the papers, when I looked up and saw that they had already called our number! Flashing was 322. We were there for maybe two minutes...so we rushed up to that window with our number in hand, and said, we're sorry but we're 321. Get a new number was the automated response. Well, it really was a person, but the way she said it seemed like she was a mechanical device or something. Disgruntled, we grabbed a new number, 371- and yes, these are the real numbers because the memory is so engrained in my brain. We watched the numbers fly by, about five minutes later, we were up. There was a lot of commentary going on about how quickly they went through the numbers, I think they skipped at least 18 people. Finally, we got back up there, gave them the paperwork and waited. Hmmm...you need to have a health examination. Great, of course, it wouldn't be that easy. We politely told them that we had already done that, we had to do it for the paperwork that we just handed them. I'm sorry, you need to have a health exam. Okay, wait, we have a copy of the health exam from Kunming, will this work? I'm sorry, no copies accepted. *sigh, alright. What do we need to do? Go to a hospital and get this filled out. Even more digruntled, we left with the new health exam paper-which was the EXACT same form I had just gotten filled out in China about three weeks ago- and headed to a hospital. Well, the Bumrungrad hospital was the hospital of choice from a friend. It was huge, and clean, and so nice. We got to the registration to find out that the place closed already at 3pm. It was around 4pm at that time. *sigh, okay, sign us up for your earliest appointment, which meant ANOTHER early morning. We headed back to our room to get cleaned up, and I suddenly realized I didn't have my purse. Frantic, I threw the room upside down, but could not find it. After much agitation, we realized I had to have left it at one of the embassies. We got online so I could call my employer about the potential delay in our trip and that we might not make it back on Thursday, when I looked in my e-mail and found this message. Dear Suzanne, we have found your purse left in a taxi, please call this number to retrieve it. YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!! The luck, I was so happy. We called the number, got the address, and hopped onto the sky train to get the purse. It was being held in the taxi headquarters. When we got there, we were treated like royalty. Kind of weird, I just wanted my purse back. We got to meet the "president" of the company and the entire process of how they tracked me down. It was a process, they found my arrival entry card for the Chinese customs in my purse, found out that I was American and called the US Embassy to find me. Because I had just been there, they had my e-mail ready to give out. Then it was education time, we learned about the red shirts and the yellow shirts of Thailand. Red=democracy, yellow=Monarchy. Then it was picture time, they took pictures of the whole purse handing off and the handshakes. They said they'll use it in the paper for propaganda. Sweeeeet, as mom said, "do you guys really feel safe about that? *sigh, you need to be careful." We headed out of the place about 30 mins. later, with the purse in hand. On our way back to the hotel, we were kicking ourselves for not asking for one of the red shirts. I'm sure they would have been happy to give one to us. Anyways, on arriving to our hotel, we ate the International buffet for dinner and decided to call it a night. Total walking distance: 9-10 miles.

Thailand Day 2

Beep beep, went the alarm. Sleepy, we managed to wake ourselves up, get a few minutes of the Australian open, and headed down to breakfast. We woke up around 7:30am...or so we thought. We headed down to breakfast and on our way we saw a clock that read 6:30am...interesting, but we just figured the clock was broken or something. We ate our inclusive breakfast, pretty nice buffet-omelettes, potatoes, french toast, pancakes, juice, and fruit- and then were going to call the US embassy to see how much it would cost to get pages. Well, we realized that Thailand time is different from China time, who knew? *probably everybody but us... And realized that it was too early to go anywhere. We finally got a hold of the embassy and found out that they were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. day...great. Now we were up super early, for no reason. We decided to hit the town walking. We walked to this really great mall that our friends had told us about. The food court, AMAZING. I got to eat Auntie Anne's soft pretzels, Cold Stone, Burger King, nachos, and other great snacks. As mom said,"you ate your way through Bangkok huh?" After that, we headed back to the hotel to just hang out and do some reading, and oh yeah, watch the Australian open :) We went out to dinner and headed back to the paragon to watch "Yes, Man" Jim Carey's latest in the Laz boy theater. All the chairs are lazy boys. It was nice, the movie was so-so. Then we walked back to the hotel and went to bed to wake up early, again. Total walking distance: 5 miles
On the walking bridge to the malls!!
View from the walking bridge
Outside view of the paragon, nice palm trees eh?
The main sign.

Thailand Day 1

So excited to get out of the freezing cold, we were really looking forward to this trip. We started packing about an hour before the trip and then headed off to the airport for our flight. We met up with Chris and Liz and hung out with them a bit before boarding the plane. Because of all the craziness that happened recently, Thai air only offers flights 3 days a week, so we flew out on Sunday and planned to return on Thursday. The flight was great, it went by pretty quickly, and the food was actually really delicious. We landed and stepped out into heat, it felt so great. We said farewell to the Alford's-they were headed to Chiang Mai- and went to pick up our luggage. When we went through customs I realized that I had no more blank pages for visas, so we added a trip to the US embassy to get more pages sewn in. How cool is that? I used up all my pages :) In Thailand, there's a fee to use the highways, not sure why, but the gov't is making a steal from that fee. 400 Baht later-about $12- we arrived safely at our hotel, the Woraburi Inn. It was nice, our room was cozy and had satellite TV, so we got to watch a ton of the Australian open and some movies. Jeff and I got to the hotel around 6pm, so we thought we'd go for a stroll to get some dinner. Our road that the hotel was on was a HUGE pub street, all kinds of pubs-Irish, British, Danish, Jersey- so we decided on Hanharan's, I think an Irish pub. We got some buffalo wings, chicken burger, and a beer and watched some soccer games. After that, we took to the streets to walk around on the night market.After a while of seeing the same things, we decided to call it a night, we were a little sleepy and had to get up early to get all of our errands done so we could enjoy the other three days while the visa was getting ready. Headed back to the hotel and hit the sack at 11pm.
On the plane, excited to go to Thailand!
These were bugs and crickets and insects of all kinds. I think they were food... The first cross road near Woraburi Inn. We were in the heart of the night market, it was fun.