MPD

Map of my trip in Korea and China

Best Places to get pictures taken:

1. Tiananmen Square (Beijing)
2. The Bund (Shanghai)

Tastiest food:

• Hongdong Garden (Gimhae, South Korea)

• Huangting in the Peninsula Hotel (Beijing)

Most surprising food:

• Duck Heads (Shanghai – I thought we were ordering shrimp)

Best meal for the buck:

• Jianbing (Beijing and Shanghai – almost a breakfast burrito for 30 cents)

Best Restaurant slogan:

Check out the logo - Mr. Pizza is a player

• Mr. Pizza – Love for Women (South Korea) Also winner of the best pizza ingredient: crust stuffed with mashed sweet potatoes.

Sketchiest transportation:

• Halfway between a vespa and a motorbike.  With three people.  And all our luggage.  But it was only 5 kuai! (70 cents?)

Most appropriate exit from a museum:

• Leaving the Urban Planning exhibit in Shanghai into a giant underground mall from which it took over 45 minutes to find an exit.

Most surprising meal (for someone else):

• Taking a girl I had just met ten minutes before to a 5-star restaurant (Huangting) because I had budgeted too much money and had decided to take the first person I met to the most expensive restaurant I could find.

Best hotel feature:

• Renting a cell phone for $1.50/day.  Wow, what a great idea.

Best Club:

• Coco Banana (best fellow dancers, too)

Most awesome and intimidating Chef:

• KungFu Pasta Chef making longevity noodles on my birthday.

Best Athlete:

• Michael Phelps

Best conversation:

• 35 minutes of talking to a taxi driver in Beijing who guessed that I’d lived in China for two or three years.  That was the moment when I really got Chinese.

Most frustrating 20 minutes:

• Getting stopped on the great wall by men from the army and not having a ticket because my tour guide was trying to scam us and having to speak for the two guys from the Netherlands as well because I spoke Chinese.  We eventually just paid them again, and then I had to convince the tour guide to give us our money back at the end.  Haha.

Best choice for what to pack:

• A week’s supply of Immodium AD

Place most likely to return:

• Beijing

Hmm, I guess that’s enough for now.  If you want, I’ll put more up later when I think of them!