Eating, The Bund, Oriental Pearl Tower, and more eating…

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We started out early in the morning and had some fabulous steam buns at a chain place called Babi Foods.


All this for less than 2USD.

We took a long stroll down Nanjing Pedestrian Walkway to all the shopping areas all the way to The Bund. We took the tram through the Sightseeing Tunnel. The tunnel has a whole bunch of flashing lights and props. We read in the guidebook that the ride was kind of corny… and it was.

Our ticket also included entrance into the the Deep Sea World Museum and China Sex Culture Museum. The train and 2 museums for the price of 55RMB (=7.50USD). The Deep Sea World Museum had some fresh water fish and some salt water fish and lots of petrified sea creatures or stuffed ones.

One of the funniest things I found was this poor petrified sea creature that had a frown on its face:

We walked by the Oriental Pearl Tower but decided not to go up because it cost too much money. Instead we went to the nearby Brand Name Supermall to have some dinner at a Thai place. We headed back to the apartment after that but stopped by a wonton place to pick up some soup dumplings and bought some more steamed buns.

Check out the slideshow for more food pictures:


Arrival in Shanghai

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The first two airport shuttles were full when we tried to board this morning. They run every 10-15 minutes which was good but it seemed they get filled out pretty quickly. Eventually they let us board one but we had to stand then in the middle of the freeway we had to get off and get onto another bus. It was kind of strange but I guess we got there on time. Our flight ended up being delayed also so at least we had the time to go through that hassle.

We had an interesting breakfast on the airplane, my favorite was the item on the top left corner. It was a cold tofu dish accompanied by a sweet thick soy sauce. The soy sauce was quite delicious with the tofu but I couldn’t eat it all because it was a large portion.

Upon arriving in Shanghai, we had to take another airport shuttle to the place we’d be staying. We were renting a room from our flatmate’s friend’s apartment. She has a website where she offers short term rentals in Shanghai.

After we got to the apartment, we did some laundry and planned the rest of the week. Unfortunately I did not do my part and plan the last half of our trip to Shanghai and Macau so we did it all on arrival. It took up most of the afternoon so all we had time for was to have dinner.

We went to a Taiwanese Restaurant called Charmant and had some good ol’ Taiwanese delicacies.


Pickled cucumbers.


Rice with pork floss.


Taiwanese milk tea complete with pearls.


Cold noodles with peanut sauce and cucumbers.


(Not-so-stinky) tofu.


Taiwanese sandwich.


Three cup chicken (yummy basil).

Since we were taking it easy today, we stayed in to watch another Korean movie. This one called “She’s On Duty” which was kind of corny but pretty funny.

Shop ’til you drop

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Our friend Susan was heading back to Taiwan today and we’re leaving tomorrow for Shanghai so this would be our last day to shop. We left around 10:30AM and headed to Dongdaemun first shop at their malls. The malls are different here in that it houses many small stalls that each carry very similar but also very different clothing.

The shop keepers kind of speak English or Japanese or Chinese. If only we could speak Korean, it would’ve made shopping much easier. We didn’t buy much since it was hard to bargain. We also headed to the MyengDong area before Susan had to leave.

Ron and I had lunch at a bibimbap place.

Ron and I continued shopping at Namdaemum then back to Dongdaemun. We had street food for dinner or corn dogs (with fries on the outside) and chicken on a stick.

We headed back early because it started to rain. Back at the hostel, we watched the Korean movie, White Valentine, while packing up since we have to catch an early shuttle to the airport.


Sorak Waterpia

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After a long evening of skiing, in the morning, we decided to take a bus another hour away to Sorak Waterpia in order to soak our sore muscles and relax. This place was much different than Dragon Hill Spa as it catered more towards families with children. They had an indoor water park area with a wave pool and community pools and saunas plus they had outdoor hot springs with different minerals and different temperatures. In the separate men and women areas, they had saunas and hot springs as well, up to 41 degrees Celsius.

Susan and I also went to try their ginseng scrub where they scrub and wash your face, body, and hair. It was quite a rough experience and you sort of feel like a piece of meat. The ladies who perform the services are wearing their underwear (looked like black lace lingerie) and they’re chatting (but sounds like scolding) with each other the whole time. It’s like they don’t really acknowledge you but are just doing their work.

This place was more expensive too, I think the admission is something around 30,000Won plus you have to pre-charge your RFID bracelets with money in order to spend on food, rentals, and services. Not like the other spa where you pay afterwards.

Afterwards we headed on a bus back to Seoul and went to have “duk bok kee” (rice cake) at Sindandong. The restaurant was named “I Love Sindandong” and we found it in our Korea guide book so thought we’d check it out.

They gave us bibs in case we splashed the spicy red sauce on us:

The dishes had ramen, clear vermicelli, boiled eggs, rice cake, fish cake, seafood, and lots of other things. The most interesting was the rice cake shaped like balls filled with cheese.

We were very pleasantly full after our late night dinner.


Christmas at YongPyong Ski Resort

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We took a bus to YongPyong Resort to spend Christmas Day on the slopes. It was about a 3 hour trip. Ron booked us into a Youth Hostel that had heated floors and they provided rice pillows and floor pads to sleep on and it had a shared bathroom with the rest of the floor.

Since we arrived a bit let, we decided to go night skiing, starting from 5pm to midnight (or something like that). Back home in Cali, I’ve never been night skiing so I was interested to see what it’d be like. The night was beautiful. The snow was white and fluffy and it wasn’t as freezing cold as I thought it might be.

We went on some bunny (green) lifts and then we thought we’d be more adventurous and try some blue runs. In the end, we ended up accidentally going down a double diamond run. It was REALLY REALLY steep!! It was pretty scary going down and we couldn’t believe it was a blue run… so it made sense it was a double diamond but I can’t believe I made it all the way down since I’m not that great of a snowboarder.

I guess the picture is not so clear but my expression of shock is real.

We had dinner at one of the restaurants at the resort. A cold beer and warm food really hit the spot.


It was an interesting way to spend Christmas.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!