SAS Travelogue-Shanghai

SAS Travelogue-Shanghai

by Rebecca Smith

Ni Hao!!! Yo yo yo, from Shanghai. So anywho, my lasy entry was slightly sappy and not up to snuff, so here goes back to my normal self. Anywho. Two clear ups. One--I am not mean to my roommate, you are all very confused. I like my roommate Monesha very much, but our room was supposed to be a triple, so we are both very upset because the administration seems to think the fact that our third roommate never showed gives them the right to install another person in our room. Well HELLLLLLL no to that!!! That is why I sounded belligerent. Numero dos.....Theo, from Louisiana, real dumb, recently seen on Real World Road Rules Challenge, originally on Road Rules, I will not befreind him Brent, he's an idiot, I have no time for people like him. OK onto news. Someone got arrested in Kobe, he's no longer with us. He got in a fight, don't know the details. Also, Our oldest pasenger, Mae aged 92, just lost her husband 2 nights ago, and he is no being stored in the ship's freezer.....sad, but even worse, how creepy is that?!?!?!? Anywho, the other night we had SAS Singled Out, wherein the hormones and the obvious female heavy ratio came to the foreground. Anywho, some little boy made it to the final round and introduced himself in a vulgar manner as coerced by the older boys. Needless to say, his momma gave him a spanking so hard he forgot it ever happened. OK about Shanghai, yesterday went on tour, saw and Acrobatics show, ate Chinese food, which PS is not very good for vegeterians, and disgusting and nothing like American Chinese food. Went shopping. Went nuts, bargaining is popular here. No matter how well I think I did, the Chinese nativces can always get it for like 1/3 of the price. OH well. Shanghai, by the by, is the dirtiest, nastiest, most polluted, most densely populated city in China, but i think the dirtiest, nastiest, grossest, rudest, city I have ever encountered, but its super cheap to shop......which is why..... OK today, only shopping. Went to this place called the Xiang Yang Market. CRAZYYYYYYY!!! Bought a Coach bag and wallet for so cheap. Bought Jason the cutest little suit. Bought 17 DVD's for like a buck each. Bought a NorthFace thingy. Tried to buy Louis Vuitton, but there was an incident, and they wanted way too much money. Well, anywho, so if you want Louis Vuitton or Gucci or Prada, the vendors lead you a couple blocks from the market to their house (which is a tiny room in a dirty building with a shared grotty bathroom) and in their one room apartment is a heaven for designer bags and wallets that have "fallen off the truck" so to speak. We spent like an hour there picking out our bags, and then just left weith nothing cuz they wouldn't budge on the price, but they were so pissed (as all the vendors are because you are trying to buy something from them, but even more pissed becasue we wasted so much of their time. So after that we hightailed it back to the market to escape the Chinese mafia (who I am now convinced want my blood). OK that was fine, then we tried to take a cab to another market but he dropped us off at a real mall where they sell real LV and Gucci and Prada, so we were lost and in an expensive area and it started to rain and its a holiday weekend in Shanghai, so no cabs to be had. So we started to walk back to the Xiang Yang market. Along the way we stopped to buy DVD's every so often. At the last point, we discovered how illegal it is for vendors to have these DVD's as when a cop showed they all slammed their little suitcases of DVD"s shut and ran, but my friends and I were still holding some and being pushed by the massive crowd (20 million people live in Shanghai, and I swear they were all on this one street at that point). So my friends and I were separated and we all still had the DVD's. One girl had none, but she had blonde hair, so is easily picked out in the crowd, so the vendor chased her and started yelling at her because he thought she had DVD's, so they found the rest of us and we gave them back, but he wanted us to pay for them and was yelling at us. So we just threw them at him and ran and he kept yelling and all the people were staring at us (but I'm not sure if that's cuz we were white girls or becauyse he was saying we had stolen from him). Oh well, more Chinese mafia attacks. Then we went to the market again. It took our friend forever to buy her silk dress or whatever so me and Lindsay (the blonde) went looking for Louis Vuitton, but we wouldn't follow them, we just wanted to see pictures and have them bring it to us. No such luck finding exactly what we wanted though, so we gave up on that. But Suz, its for the best cuz I totally forgot what the one you wanted looks like, so I was just gonna get you some square looking one. But I think you said something about it looking like the LL Bean tote. Remind me so I can try again in Hong Kong or Vietnam. Anywho, that was my fiasco of a scary day. Tonight we leave Shanghai. We leave for Hong Kong...in a few days, one of our professors will be married on the ship. Soooo cute. Sorry this email is sooooo choppy and bad grammar is abundant, but I have only an hour on the internet and it takes me forever to type on this keyboard. OK, I don't know how to say bye in Chinese, so I will just say later and hopefully by Hong Kong, I will figure out the Chinese. Write again from Hong Kong. PS--dad, did you get my email. If not, I was just wondering if you had sent away for my refund yet. Just a reminder. Also, has anyone gotten emails from me, because I haven't gotten any replies, so I don't know. I can't tell if it is working. Let me know.