Well, I decided to take a day off to see if I could kick start myself and get over the cold or whatever quickly. Jen and Amy went off and saw the Royal Palace (possible name) which is a museum with some history related stuff in it (Luang Prabang is the old capital of Laos, don’t know if I mentioned that before.) After that they went up a hill to a little temple.
They also babied me a bit and brought me food and a watermelon shake which has become my absolute favorite thing to drink over here in Asia. Later in the day we checked out the night market. It was slightly different, but not all that unique from the many we have seen so far. We had a crepe again, it was superb.
There was a pyramid of chocolate which looked like rip-off Ferrero Roche, maybe like 30 or so making up the pyramid and it was only 1/3rd of the price of a much smaller number of ACTUAL Ferrero Roche, so I had to try it. We got back to the room and broke them open. I tried one, and had to spit it out (secretly) so I could still get Amy to try one. She wasn’t as discrete with her displeasure and so Jen never even tried them. A shame, I had high hopes for what ended up being a pyramid of lardy lumps.
Well today started with the last of Amy’s German friends leaving to go home which was kind of sad… we then lounged about the apartment for a fair while before motivating ourselves (after some lunch) to go do something. We went to Amy’s favorite temple, which was really really neat. It had lots of practicing monks and others with not too many tourists… especially considering it is the weekend. It had a very special feeling there, it was quite something to see. We wasted some time milling about before going to the main event of the day: The Circus. It is a kind of cirque-du-soleil type thing and was a lot of fun to see.
After we headed over to a nice area of Shanghai (where we get our massages) to have some dinner. We got dropped off in front of a place which unfortunately closed in only a few minutes, but an Italian place next door was open. It seemed like an unimpressive menu for the money (how quickly cheap China prices seem unjustified as they start to approach western prices) so we kept walking around the blocks looking for somewhere else. No surprise, we ended up back where we started, except now we were wet.
We were brought upstairs after a confusing explanation that there was a big party coming in downstairs. Upstairs was more like a club or a bar, which was actually nicer (in my opinion) after getting over the weird feeling of eating a nice Italian meal in a dance club atmosphere. The food was good, and the place was empty despite being a really nice looking place. The only people milling about were staff members pouring themselves drinks and playing pool.
Also, we booked our hotel today. The New Siam II… plans for now are to stay there until the Saturday. We leave for Bangkok on the 2nd. One more night for Shanghai, then it’s beaches, 30 degree weather, and lots more adventure!
