I have not kept my word, nope, I said I would keep a day to day update of my parents visit, but alas, I did not. Let me give you the brief synopsis of what went on since my last posting of Day 2:
Day 3 - Is he pulling a knife on me?
My wife has become locally famous for her harsh negotiating skills, especially when it comes to buying a fake pair of Oakley sunglasses. Yes, we headed to one of the New XiangYang Markets, this one in particular is the one in the Science & Technology Museum to load up on fake clothes and other accessories. My mom loaded up on a bunch of fake polo and lacoste kid's shirts to sell at her store (she bought them for around $5USD and plans to sell them for $20USD, not too shabby). Besides all the fun negotiating that went on, the only real exciting thing that went on was when I was negotiating for my aunt for some chinese wine covers for her friends. The guy started the negotiations at a particularly high level, my boyish white face translates to "stupid American who has a lot of money that he will spend at my shop," this of course doesn't help me in the starting price, but I hold my own. So I settled in at a price about 1/6 of where he started. He then took his right hand and made a motion like he was slitting his throat (symbolic that my price was killing him). So he then lowered his price pretty significantly, and, true to my negotiating form, I came back with the same price as my first price. He then went over to a cabinet pulled out a knife, at this moment I just froze (I considered my life to be pretty lucky that through the first 26 years I did not have a knife pulled on me, now my life is officially heading downhill), he took the knife, turned it around so the sharp side was facing him, and pretended as if he were stabbing himself to death (a more poignant symbol that my price was killing him), so in the next round I did bring my price up a bit, but still made a pretty good deal. I look back on the whole knife thing and can laugh, but not sure if the guy will get many customers doing that.
Day 4 - A walk in the park
The biggest highlight of this day was our walk through Century Park. This park is a park that rivals the likes of Central Park in NYC. It has man made lakes and waterways, trees, walking paths, flowers, and a mini amusement park. The rents thought it was neat to have such a big place in the middle of the city and they enjoyed it. The best part about it was the rules sign in front of the bumper cars restricting "drunks, addicts, and psychopaths" from using the bumper cars. Yes those psychopaths can get rowdy on the bumper cars (I will take a picture the next time I am there).
Day 5 - Octopus on a stick!
We headed downtown in the morning to walk through the French Concessions and that area of Shanghai. We then took a taxi ride to the Wujiang Lu food street (as of the end of April this place will no longer exist so it was neat to be there one more time). We enjoyed some stir fried dumplings and also some nice barbecued octopus on a stick. This was my first experience with the sea ridden animal on a stick and it wasn't too bad, nothing that I would love to go back for, but not too bad.
Day 6 - Stealy Rain
I had to go into work in the morning, but in the meantime the rents headed to the children's fakes market where my mom wanted to buy some more clothes to sell at her store at some insane markup. My aunt wanted to see the museum, so with the rains a coming, this was the best day to see it. Her trip took a turn for the worse when her camera was stolen on her way to the museum (apart from my wife and the rents). Oh well, she said she wanted to get rid of that camera anyhow. We also visited the electronics market to buy her an 80 GB external hard drive and a 1GB memory card for my parents digital camera (got both for less then $80 USD, which isn't bad).
Day 7 - Bonnie and Cryde
We went to Suzhou on this day to see the awesome gardens and canal lined streets of this water town. This place is pretty cool, it has lost some of the luster of being an old water town as everything felt like a tourist trap, actually they say there are some water towns that are much better then this one so we might explore the other ones sometime in the future. The biggest story of this trip was on our way home an otherwise 1 1/2hour car ride took over 6 hours!!! Yes, earlier in the day there was some big bank heist where the robbers supposedly stole millions and millions of dollars in money and they were on the lose. China's reaction to this, shut down all the major highways and search every vehicle on its way into a major city. So we waited in a jam for over 4 hours (with two kids under 3, this is not fun, but they were really good considering) only to find the police would only glance in each car as it was forced to exit and then re-enter on the highway. While this could put a huge damper on the trip, we were able to shrug it off and look back on the day as a really fun day.
Day 8 - Relax under neon lights
We spent most of the day relaxing (recovering from the previous day), then in the early evening we had some dinner at Shanghai Uncle, which I thought was really good, not really Chinese food, a little rich, but good. We then headed downtown to Nanjing Road, which is famous for its neon lights lining the pedestrian street. If you have been to Tokyo, you probably are not impressed, but my parents have hardly been away from the east coast, so they really enjoyed it. My dad especially enjoyed being approached by very young attractive women (mostly college aged women) who would ask him if he was looking for a good time. To clarify, he would only be approached when he was walking alone (they seek out the single white men, ideally older single white men), and when they ask if he was looking for a good time what they actually meant was "do you want to come to a seedy bar with us so that we can get you drunk and steal your money or have someone beat you up for your money!" Not exactly the good time you might be looking for (by the way, you shouldn't be looking for that kind of good time anyway).
Day 9 - Heading home...Shanghai Style
The only thing left to do in Shanghai was to ride the Magnetic Levitation Train (Maglev) back to the Pudong airport. This thing is a nice and smooth ride that takes you 431km/h or about 270 miles per hour, so its pretty fast. They enjoyed that as their last thing to do in Shanghai, and headed back to the good ole USofA
So, that is my parents trip in a nutshell, sorry for the length, I will add some pictures in the future so that you get an idea as to some of things we saw. Also, for those of you who actually read, Renee is doing well now, she accompanied us on most of the adventures noted above, but did have somethings that she had to sit out on.
Anyway, back to the good ole days of my blog where I get to talk about nothing and everyone gets to enjoy my IN and OUT!!!
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