Hello to all those avid readers of our blog (all 3-4 of you!),
We are in Hangzhou now and it is way better than Guangzhou. It is definately more of a touristy city and the scenery is much more appealing. It has also been cooler as it has been raining.
We were stuck in Guangzhou (also known as Canton) - the place where cantonese was created and is still mainly spoken. This left Caitlin's translation powers looking crippled and decrepit. Not to worry though as now we are in Hangzhou (1.45 hours flight north east and 45 minutes train from shanghai), she is coming into her own. It's pretty amazing how well she can speak this crazy language, and whenever i try and repeat what she says (and i still feel i do it verbatim), i only get puzzled looks from the chinese folk I am trying to converse with...jerks. She bought a super duper translator today (she needs a bit more than mine can handle for her uni course mum and steph), and it is touch sensitive with a stylus. She can copy any chinese character she sees into it and it will translate it into english (text and voice). This also works for english to mandarin and also for phrases. It's pretty gnarley, I'll add a picture.
We are in Hangzhou now and it is way better than Guangzhou. It is definately more of a touristy city and the scenery is much more appealing. It has also been cooler as it has been raining.
We were stuck in Guangzhou (also known as Canton) - the place where cantonese was created and is still mainly spoken. This left Caitlin's translation powers looking crippled and decrepit. Not to worry though as now we are in Hangzhou (1.45 hours flight north east and 45 minutes train from shanghai), she is coming into her own. It's pretty amazing how well she can speak this crazy language, and whenever i try and repeat what she says (and i still feel i do it verbatim), i only get puzzled looks from the chinese folk I am trying to converse with...jerks. She bought a super duper translator today (she needs a bit more than mine can handle for her uni course mum and steph), and it is touch sensitive with a stylus. She can copy any chinese character she sees into it and it will translate it into english (text and voice). This also works for english to mandarin and also for phrases. It's pretty gnarley, I'll add a picture.
We went out to the night markets tonight but they were just like any old markets. I'm keen to go to a techno market at some stage. We missed out in Guangzhou. Stupid Guangzhou.Ok the real reason we didn't like Guangzhou is because a restaurant tricked us into drinking tap water which we though was distilled water. This left us both with a horrible case of "pepper belly". $400 worth of cancellations and re- bookings, 10 gastro-stop pills, 8 gastrolite drinks and a course of doxycyclin later - we may have left Guangzhou, but its memory will remain with our bowels forever.
Anyway, I'm going to sign off for now. See you when I have something more exciting to write.
Pauly
P.s - We are staying in another 4 star hotel for super cheap but once again, I don't think we really belong here.
The thing is, laundry at these hotels costs HEAPS (like $30 for 4 shirts and 4 shorts) so we havn't had a chance to get much done. We have been using detergent in the bathtubs and stuff for small items of clothing and hanging them in the bathroom. So we are down to some of those old clothes we thought we could need at some stage but probably wont be wearing much (me more so than Caitlin). So, when coming home from the night markets, we walk back through the lobby (remember it has been raining) and there is classical pianist placing in the lobby and adjoining cocktail lounge. I walk past the pianist with insanely loud and sqeaky white sneakers, an old grey shirt and board shorts with a bag containing the pizza we couldn't finish at pizza hut. We were all all wet. All the nicely dressed people in the lounge kinda looked at us weird. We don't belong in places like this...but I don't care because in China.....I'M RICH BIATCH!
P.s - We are staying in another 4 star hotel for super cheap but once again, I don't think we really belong here.
The thing is, laundry at these hotels costs HEAPS (like $30 for 4 shirts and 4 shorts) so we havn't had a chance to get much done. We have been using detergent in the bathtubs and stuff for small items of clothing and hanging them in the bathroom. So we are down to some of those old clothes we thought we could need at some stage but probably wont be wearing much (me more so than Caitlin). So, when coming home from the night markets, we walk back through the lobby (remember it has been raining) and there is classical pianist placing in the lobby and adjoining cocktail lounge. I walk past the pianist with insanely loud and sqeaky white sneakers, an old grey shirt and board shorts with a bag containing the pizza we couldn't finish at pizza hut. We were all all wet. All the nicely dressed people in the lounge kinda looked at us weird. We don't belong in places like this...but I don't care because in China.....I'M RICH BIATCH!
4 comments:
i like pizza hut. do they have the sit down kind... the kind from our fondest of childhood memories and also that easter when we were in HB and really hungover? because that would be special. And what is chinese pizza like? i am guessing smaller and cheaper.
nice work on the language burnsy, turns out me telling you that you were an idiot for thinking you had no language skills was pretty spot on. Also, maybe your story telling in chinese will be more interesting. (pauly can you interject some comments in AB's posts so that i don't fall asleep... BONG!)
lukey locked us out of our flat last night and we rocked up at Fenton St to sleep on the futons at like 11pm... he is becoming more and more like his old man every day!
haha! Yeh the pizza huts arnt just sit down though, they are fully fledged massive restaurants here...and quality restaurants too. The kind rich chinese people get dressed up to go to. The pizza is more expensive and not as good but it is still better than alot of the other weird food they have here. The menu at pizza hut is massive.
I will endevour to interject into AB's posts more...but i need to be waiting for my rugby league to buffer (it takes ages...like 30-40 mins per half) and a couple of beers under my belt.
R u smashing Tina's? Is that ur new girlfriend?
Hows work and shit?
Pauly
p.s room service is awesome
oi oi oi.
ur last comment wasnt very nice *glares*
but it is true i must say. oh well. xD
conniiechiwa
Hey Connie,
lol was that in reference to my pizza hut comment? I only mentioned it because everytime we go to pizza hut we look like scraggily western tourists and everyone else all dressed up nicely for a family dinner lol We on the other hand still accidently treat it like a fast food place like we do in oz. We are running out of clothes and it was weird not fitting in at a pizza hut ;)
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