Moganshan

Even though we mostly stopped traveling when Danny’s work organized a weekend trip to the mountains we decided to go. It was in Moganshan, a three hour bus ride outside Shanghai. We mostly did some hiking around the mountains and the lake. We took it easy and sat down a lot while people were walking around looking at sights. We stayed in a fairly nice hotel and it was fun hanging out with Danny’s co-workers. I wasn’t thrilled with the food which was all traditional Chinese banquet meals. I packed my own snacks and didn’t really eat the Chinese banquet meals. There wasn’t anything terribly impressive to see but it was nice to get out of the city for a weekend.

Staycation

For the National Holidays this year it was our first long vacation (a full week off) in China where we didn’t go anywhere. I was 29 weeks pregnant at the time and Danny didn't want to go anywhere that didn't have good medical care just in case. We hung around the house, went out to a few nice meals, and invited some friends over. Danny went into work for a few days of it. Since we weren’t going anywhere Danny thought it would be fun to book a night in a fancy hotel in the middle of the week. We stayed in the Hyatt located in Jin Mao Tower, one of the famous skyscrapers in Shanghai. Most of the time when we travel we stay at cheap places or hostels but now and then we use credit card points to get a fancy hotel. The Hyatt was pretty nice and had an amazing view. I was really excited to go swimming and have a nice bath. Our apartment only has a shower.

The best part of our stay was that they decided to give us a free upgrade. When we got there to check in the room wasn’t ready and we walked around for an hour and had lunch. When we go back it still wasn’t ready. I think mostly because Danny was the only one in line (it was mostly Chinese locals who don’t behave terribly well) that didn’t scream and act like a complete @$$ to the manager, they decided to give us an upgrade to a suite. It didn’t hurt that he pointed out that his pregnant wife was tired and had been waiting two hours (might as well get what you can out of it). The room was pretty amazing. Besides a standard bedroom it had two bathrooms -one with a Jacuzzi, a living room, a study and an amazing view of the city.

I’m still a little bummed we didn’t travel anywhere but it was a nice week off.

Moganshan

Even though we mostly stopped traveling when Danny’s work organized a weekend trip to the mountains we decided to go. It was in Moganshan, a three hour bus ride outside Shanghai. We mostly did some hiking around the mountains and the lake. We took it easy and sat down a lot while people were walking around looking at sights. We stayed in a fairly nice hotel and it was fun hanging out with Danny’s co-workers. I wasn’t thrilled with the food which was all traditional Chinese banquet meals. I packed my own snacks and didn’t really eat the Chinese banquet meals. There wasn’t anything terribly impressive to see but it was nice to get out of the city for a weekend.

Update

I know I’ve been a big slacker and sort of given up on the blog recently. There are two reasons. The whole point of this blog was I wanted to talk about living in China and all our travels around Asia. 

First, after two years here, day to day experiences aren’t new and shocking anymore. I’ve kind of gotten used to the culture and how things are done here. It is dirty and disorganized and there are a lot of things I find frustrating or gross about living in a developing country but it rarely is interesting enough to write a blog post about it. Even though Shanghai is a modern city, the people haven’t caught up with the development, particularly the migrant workers from the countryside who have no concept of appropriate etiquette in a big city. Public places involve exposure to a lot of pushing, shoving, yelling, and spitting (amongst other bodily functions). For the most part Danny and I have found a little bubble we are comfortable in; which includes surrounding me with western staples. I only eat real Chinese food about once a month now. It is funny because I love “Chinese food” in the states but I can’t stand most of the authentic Chinese foods here. There actually is a restaurant here called Fortune Cookie that sells Americanized Chinese food. It was opened by an American whose family owns lots of “Chinese” restaurants in the states. Pretty much only foreigners ever go there, we like it a lot. Danny likes authentic Chinese food but he gets it at lunch and eats mostly western food with me. Anyway, on a day to day basis our lives aren’t that different from what they would be at home except a handful of stressful situations due to cultural differences.

The second reason I’ve stopped posting as much is we have mostly stopped traveling because of the pregnancy. Danny doesn’t want us to go anywhere that doesn’t have access to good hospitals in case of emergency. I think this is a little overcautious since I’m having a pretty healthy problem free pregnancy but he was fairly insistent about never being able to forgive himself if we had an emergency. I also get tired after walking more than like 10 minutes now so it sort of puts a cramp in travel plans. We did travel over the summer though. We spent about a month traveling around Philly, DC, NY, and San Francisco to see our family and friends. We also took a little vacation to a resort in Mexico to relax. We didn’t do any sightseeing travels over the summer though. Instead, we went shopping for baby stuff almost nonstop. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like or trust the quality of stuff you can find in Shanghai except for in the super expensive malls where everything is triple the price it would be in the states. We came back from summer with 3 suitcases full of stuff for the baby and two carry-on bags for ourselves. Good thing we are used to traveling light.

Anyway, that is why my posts have slowed down. I will put up posts about our two little vacations but they weren’t to anywhere terrible exciting. Danny claimed he was going to do one as soon as he finishes some work stuff but he only has ever written like three posts and they have been about two sentences each so I don’t have high hopes.