Hello to all of my loyal fans (all 6 of you),
Major Note: As you will notice at the end of this post, I have started a YouTube channel where I will upload small clips and maybe later even some video of my trip. You can get to it here:
http://www.youtube.com/b0otable
In an attempt to catch up with my blog I am going to have to go over some things fairly quickly.
View Pictures of the water trip here
One of our last planned trips for the session one group was a trip to a what the staff referred to as a water town. Once again we the students had no idea what to expect, but what we weren’t expecting was for our bus to stop outside of a large KFC with a noticeable lack of water for something known as a water town.
We quickly learned that we still had some walking to do before we would actually get to see the “water” area of the water town. We were introduced to the most intense tour guide I have ever met in my entire life. It turns out the water town kind of showed more of the old parts of the Shanghai area. Shanghai is considered a very modern city by most, but it also has a long history. The old Shanghai was a fishing city.
Our tour guide taking control
The tour guide was very proud of the history of home town and of his English ability. It was refreshing to see someone who seems content with what they are doing.
One of the first stops on the tour was an impressive bridge with an interesting history that crossed the main waterway of the city still being used to transport various materials and people. I think my grandpa would have been fascinated by the various exotic boats that were on the river, including a boat made of cement.
The name water town ended up being very appropriate, I would describe it to be similar to the pictures of Venice I have seen. There were tons of little shops selling all sorts of things and food. It was obvious the local economy had adapted to be tourist based.
One of the first stops within the city was the old residence of one of the wealthiest members of the town, which consisted of many impressive buildings, ponds, gardens, and other eye candy. (see the web album for more pics)
My house should have one of these
One of my favorite parts of the trip was in a temple where there multiple paintings of the various activities one might expect to participate in if they were unlucky enough to end up in hell.
One of the less graphic levels of hell
The temple had very ornate decorations and was a little out of place with the rest of the town.
After the temple we got to see a traditional Chinese Medicine pharmacy. Let’s just say it is a great deal different than the pharmacies my mom has worked at. Point and case is the image below, which is a special medicine wine (yes as it gets consumed) which includes among many exotic ingredients including snaked wrapped around a stick.
Die or Drink this?
After our formal tour we got our chance to be tourists and go around to all the local shops. There were many impressive items that I had not seen at any shops before (quite rare at this point in my trip). I also enjoyed some of the music played by various shop owners including the one in the video below.
