Been a while, 1 week left

So I kept telling myself that too much time had passed since I last updated this thing, and recognized that I only have 1 week left before I'm leaving the country. The very last post will be around the time I leave, so I figured that I definitely needed to put something else down before then. Not a whole lot is new in Hangzhou over the last month and a half. The weather has gotten pretty hot, not in a bad way, and it'll only continue to get hotter until I leave. I went to Shanghai a few weeks ago to visit an old friend from middle school, Charlie Winship, and had a pretty good time. I was there on May 1st, the opening day of the Shanghai World Expo. The country has spent something like 75 billion dollars on this thing, a great deal more than they paid for the Olympics, and the city was bustling. I was told that at any given time during the 4 months that it is running there will be between 30 and 40 million people in the city. It was absolutely ridiculous how crowded it was. I walked down to the Bund, where you get the best view of the famous skyline, and felt as if I was wading in a sea of black hair, with just the top of my head poking out to stay afloat.

Most perplexing Chinese knockoff of all time:
A friend at work showed me a picture he had taken with his camera phone of the most aggregious attempt at ripping off foreign goods that I had ever seen in China. It was the back end of a brand new, 2009 Ragne Rover. No, not a Range Rover, but a Ragne Rover. I thought about this one for a while. You would think that there is no way that a real Range Rover dealer would ever make such a spelling error and still sell the car. You would also think that the person with enough cognition to rip off an expensive model, and put together an entire car would have the thought to actually spell the name correctly. I can't wrap my head around this one

And yes, I am leaving China on June 1st. I will be heading to Shanghai to catch a flight to Phuket, Thailand, where I will be for around 9 days. After that, I'm flying to Vientiane, Laos, where I'll head to Vang Vieng for about 6 days. The last part of my trip had been up for debate for a while. Originally I had a flight out of Bangkok on June 20th. Thomas Barron didn't think that would be a good idea, something about it being a warzone, lots of people dying, buildings burning down. So after much thought, I'm now flying out of Hanoi, Vietnam on June 19th. I'm gonna be doing all the traveling by myself which I think will be very cool. Should be just about the greatest way that I could end my tenure in Asia. Gonna be pretty bittersweet, but I'm looking forward to it