This is a first, steph waking me up in the morning at 10:30am. Yes, I was that exhausted that I slept for 10 hours that night. The bed wasn't that great, but my cocoon helped and I was just that tired..
Once we got ready, we began our search for laundry drop off service and internet. Our 24K hotel (yes the name alludes to 24K gold) refused to tell us where there is cheaper laundry service than at the hotel. So we were determined to find one ourselves on the internet. They did tell us where that was, but not great directions. It was a street that circles around, meaning we can be on that street forever. We searched and searched and couldn't find it.
Along the way steph and I asked people if they knew of a laundry place. Eventually we wandered into some old people's dancing facility, thinking it was a laundry drop off service. We had a hard time explaining that we didn't want a dry cleaning service but wanted our clothes washed with water. Eventually a grandpa and grandma decided to walk us there. Guess where we ended up, at the same place we went yesterday thinking it was just dry cleaning service. Well, they still charged per item, but said would give us a discount if we brought several items.
So back to the hotel we went and this time we picked up a girl named alice to walk us to the internet place. It was really far and on the third floor. How did they ever expect us to find it ourselves remains a mystery. The internet place was not a cafe, but part of a gaming arcade. People were playing internet games on it. It was fairly cheap 5RMB per hour. We searched for laundromats, but no real luck. We also booked our flights to gullin for sunday.
Then back to the hotel to pack our laundry to drop off and explore shanghai. The laundry came out pretty expensive for 20 items it cost us $22. We felt robbed.
We spend a lot of time on logistics since we are planning everything on our own. However, we do save money this way and feel more like travelers versus tourist. So by the time we headed out it was around 4pm. We decided to go to the bund.
On our way there we had to literally dodge all sorts of bikes (motor, electric, bicycles) while crossing the streets. They were everywhere and don't yield to pedestrians. It seems like cars and bikes rules over pedestrians in general in china.
The bund is right next to the BBB river with lots of nice shops and a great view of pudong. Unfortunately it was very hazy and we couldn't figure out whether it was haze or smog that was impeding our view. I didn't even bother snapping photos.
After the walk we walked back to our hotel to meet ricky at 8pm for dinner. Ricky is bernice, steph's sister, friend from beijing. He was punctual, while we were 5mins late. We walked around and decided we were done with chinese for now and will eat indian food for dinner. We sat down and had the manager order our food and we had a really nice bottle of wine to complement our food.
We then went to volar to meet barrick for drinks. That's when the night started going downhill. We ordered 10 shots of bailey's and played dice. If you lose, you take a shot. I took quite a few of them and quickly those shots were done. Of course we moved onto ordering a bottle of grey goose. More shots more dice. More drunkenness and mess.
By the time we were done with dice, we were only halfway through the bottle. So, erik and alan decided to play themselves and polish off the bottle. I on the other hand was on my bb talking to melanie because I didn't want to drink anymore.
At 2:30am I called it quits. Erik was kind enough to take me home, meanwhile alan was nice enough to hang out later with steph and ricky.
So the night continued for them until 4:30am...this is where alan will pick up and tell you the rest of the story.
We stayed at volar for a while after priscilla and erik headed home. Barrick and his friends had also left by this stage but steph got a text telling us they had moved on to a karaoke bar so we decided to check that out. It was just a short walk from the bar. When we got there barrick and his friends were nowhere to be seen but that was not that surprising as everyone has their own room for karaoke. Ricky decided it was best that we got our own room too, however no sooner had we got settled and ordered drinks and food than steph had tracked down barrick. They had a much bigger room than us so we decided to head there instead. A few people were singing away mostly to songs I didn't recognize. After a while steph decided to get up and sing a song too with a girl from new york she had met called jean. Even steph admits that her singing was more of a screaming by this stage. Anyone who has ever heard me sing will know that I am not one to talk - fortunately everyone was saved from my singing.
After a while at the karaoke bar we were starting to get tired so we decided to head home. Steph in her drunken state had decided that we should head to the four seasons for food at 4am, but ricky managed to convince her that the hotel restaurant was unlikely to be open at that time in the morning. We got a cab and went back to our hotel.
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