Shanghai Knights

So we decided to head to Shanghai for a couple nights just to do something different. It's only an hour and twenty minute train ride and we had a nice place to stay at for free, so me, Pat and Dean headed up. Had a pretty good time exploring the city and the weather couldn't have been nicer for middle of January. It got up to around 65 degrees in the sun. We took motorcycle taxi's at one point which was an experience to say the least. These guys were total maniacs, just flying around with little regard for anyone else on the streets, whipping through sidewalks and through tunnels. We had such a good time we thought we'd continue it by getting a few drinks and hanging out on the balcony of a restaurant on the top of a building overlooking the Shanghai skyline and river. After that there were drink and dinner specials at a pretty cool pub not far from where we were. It was good to get out of Hangzhou and do something different, should happen more often.

Back in Hangzhou not a whole lot new going on. Wednesday night started out as usual, then a friend suggested we go to a Chinese club for the hell of it. It was a pretty good time, there's almost always a group of people that will approach foreigners and want to drink with them. One of them was a bit over-friendly, and I realized this after he nearly tackled me onto a table that people were dancing on. Pat ran over and pulled him away, turns out his friend told Pat that he was gay. It was incredibly weird and awkward, and we discontinued drinking with them.

After weeks of putting it off, we finally planned a trip for the Chinese New Year. Originally we had planned on going to Bangkok and Phuket, but the flights continued to be ridiculously expensive, so we booked a flight to Seoul, South Korea. 9 days to check out the country, haven't figured out much of an itinerary yet but I'm looking into it. I'm gonna see how close to the 38th Parallel I can get, maybe throw some rocks over. Somebody get in touch with Bill Clinton