May 18 and 19 - Shanghai!

So, Grace and I are still in Shanghai, here's what we've been up to for the past two days :D

Right when we got off the subway, we found floors of stores like this o.o.... took a few hours to get to all of them :D

Nanjing pedestrian walkway! It's like a mile stretch of big buildings and expensive stores o.o.

We went and visited Jamie and Tom at Shanghai Jiaotong University, they're taking summer classes there though a program through Umich, so cool :D.

Jamie's dorm room, looks decent :P

Us infront of the big library there, the nice people at the front desk even let us go inside and look around ^_^.

At the end of the day, we went home.. really late :D.

May 19th:

I've learned how amazing Baidu maps are, this is how Grace and I will start getting places :D

Grace's definition of Heaven on Earth, a whole street full of food for less than 5RMB each. The food might be a bit dirty though, but that's OK. When I have a kid, he's going to eat here for a month so he doesn't have any allergies when he grows up :D.

MMMM cheap food :D.

This is incase any of you have never seen how much of China goes to the bathroom. I call it a concrete hole in the ground. Squatting hurts.

We walked around and found this place, decided it was a good spot for a picture ^_^. It took a few tries with different people to have someone take a decent picture though >>.

We found a hotpot place and decided to have dinner there, total was 29 RMB for both of us, that's about 2 dollars a person! How I wish dorm food was like this.

We're flying to GUILIN today, we'll keep you updated :)

June 01 to 04 - HONG KONG!

So after Macau, we decided to hit up HONG KONG!

We went by these turbojet boat thingys, it still took like an hour to get from Macau to Hong Kong though, biiig waves o.o.

We decided to eat at a restaurant at the ferry dock, and we paid for it with all coins!

We then decided to wander around downtown, where we saw tons of tall buildings like this o.o.

The next day, we hit up "The Ladies Market," which is basically a street of vendors which sell lots of different things for pretty cheap, not just for women either.Grace and I both both spent an outrageous amount of money here, like 500HKD.

I then decided I wanted to try the sushi here in Hong Kong, prices here were about twice the price of Sadako :(. Sushi was pretty good though.

Grace and I then hit up a shaved ice like place, it was REALLY good.

Then we went to this restaurant.. where we ate...

DIM SUM!!! Lots of it too, for only like 10 bucks per person. It was amazingly good. 

We then decided to wander around the other side of the river, where many more tall buildings were.

At the end of our last full day here, we went up to one of Hong Kong's famous tourist locations, Victoria Peak, via the Peak Tram! It's like this little train thing that goes 45 degrees to the mountain, quite interesting.

Here's the view from up there, quite spectacular if i do say so myself. Anyway, we ate dimsim again the next day, and now we're off to Xiamen. Hopefully it's an interesting city.

May 30 to June 01 - Macau/Zhuhai

Sooo, we're in MACAU! We took a bus to Zhuhai and then literally walked across the border. We had to go through customs though, but it was quick. First thing we did was explore the streets here, they look pretty ghetto, but we're a little off from downtown. Everybody speaks canto here though, and many speak mandarin. We're almost REAL foreigners now. ohnoes.

Ghetto looking street in Macau.

We found that things are pretty expensive here, for example, this little bowl of soup was like 5 USD. I can only imagine what Hong Kong will be like.

We ended up trying and buying half a pound of pork jerky. Apparently it's a specialty food here.

The next day, we returned to Zhuhai and SHOPPED FOR AN ENTIRE AFTERNOON. (Grace even borrowed 100 of my RMB to buy a coat >>).

I also found the best invention ever. This fan gives off MIST. Wow. Why didn't i think of that?

It's so weird seeing the traffic here, it's the opposite!

We decided that Macau is famous for its casinos, so we hit some up! Here's the best rated one in Macau, the Venetian casino. I think there's one in Vegas too, its like a copy of it probably.

We first hit the gambling area, took a few pictures, and decided to gamble later.

We found this place that looked pretty cool with lots of expensive stores :D.

Then we decided to step outside and find another less expensive casino to gamble at.

We found this one! It was called The Sands.

Grace decided to spend a lot of her money on these random 20 cent, 10 cent, and 5 cent slots.

She also wasted like 50 HKD on roulette.

We agreed to both only gamble away 100HKD each maximum. She won some, but eventually lost it all to slots and roulette.

I decided to test my luck with blackjack.... however, 100HKD was the minimum bet. I went through with it and lost. Oh well. it was fun, they didn't have Texas hold'em anyway.

Grace vowed that she never wanted to go to a casino again. I thought it was alright, it would be more fun if i had lots of money to waste though :D.

Anyway, tomorrow's time for HONGKONG!!! We're taking some ferry over. Should be fun, we'll keep you updated!

May 27 - 29, Kunming/Shenzhen

Our tickets to Kunming!

Just another big city.

We finally decided to visit a nice restaurant, the food was pretty spicy, (but good in my opinion). They gave us our desert first though, which was quite annoying since it was ice cream :(.

While walking around the city, I couldn't help but notice this "Business Hotel" advertisement. It says there's rooms available for 90RMB per 3 hours. Guess theres lots of 3-hour stands going on.

We spent the rest of our time shopping, and then moved on to Shenzhen!

Our tickets to Shenzhen.

The first thing we noticed... was how empty the subways were. This would never happen in Shanghai.

We then found some food. It smelled really good so i was really happy. But then to my demise, i found out all the green vegetables were really hot peppers :(. But i still managed to get through most of it.

Grace and I managed to find a gigantic shopping plaza (somehow we always do), and there grace depleted all of the money she was carrying on her, which was like 300 RMB or something.

Now, time for MACAU!

May 24 to 26 - Sanya

I'm going to have to admit, Sanya a city in Hainan had probably one of the most beautiful coastlines I've ever seen, probably comparable to the Bahamas or Cancun, but I have yet to go to those places.

Here's pictures to prove it.

Us arriving in Haikou, Hainan, it's been a while to get off the airplane via steps.

A poor resolution panorama my phone took, but gives a pretty good idea of the beach!

Of course, we swam a bit in the ocean.

And tanned a bit, (without putting sunscreen on ), BAD idea, still recovering from sunburns haha.

JETSKIING! It was pretty expensive, like 20 USD for 15 mins, but a tooon of fun, I'm considering buying a jetski when i get back to the US and when i'm more rich xD (You can see my sunburn already :( )

After, we decided to buy some seafood. This crab was like 13 USD. Thankfully, it was a really good tasting crab xD.

However, Grace's scallops were only like 2.5 dollars, and they were good too. Darn, guess I should have gotten some of those xD.

We then decided to check out the beach during the sunset, it was quite a sight!

The next day, we went to this tropical rainforest/ethnic area, it was interesting to say the least.

We saw some cool performances too!

After, we said goodbye to our cool tour guide. (Thumbs up is some sort of greeting there)

And we went on another plane to Kunming!