A Bicycle Made for Two

Joce's blog entry:

And it cost us $46 Canadian!! Yes, for a 7 block ride. We understood his 3 fingered digit "quote" until it was time to get off the damned thing and then realized he meant $300 Gyuen (each) $$ not 3 $$ As the crowds gathered during our "discussion" I had visions of bars surrounding me - especially when he grabbed the money from my hand. So we decided to "let go" and put a curse on him. Oh the joys of travel wisdom.

During our 1 hour morning hunt for Starbucks, we came across those infamous green doors all to find out that they opened at 9:00 - it was 7:30 and PMS had nothing on the 3 of us having a caffeine fixation. The best place to meet we have since found out is the Golden Arches near the Youth Hostels. As we know, MacDonald's does have the best coffee and so it seems, the best contacts. Barry was his name, an ExPat for 16 years. He caught my attention due to his beaded bracelet, thinking it was Chinese, however, it happened to be a Celtic bracelet. No he wasn't Irish, but from England. What a great character, one who gave much wisdom on this country and its great people. He just loves the Orient and his stories were fascinating. The conversation was filled with history and where to find the best silk. So off we trotted looking for the silk market and ended up in the pearl market surrounded by mobs who would sell their goods - and I mean surrounded. You know, like sailors coming back from a 6 month stint surrounded. This was thanks to Melanie's wonderful sense of direction (she had us on our way to ShangHai!) After having run away from the swarms, we thought we would begin a calm afternoon walking the streets. Well, short of having Monique run over by a moped with her blood curdling scream in the middle of a 10 lane intersection where her scream was muffled by the 1,000,000 horns going off, this is when we decided to hiring a biker... but we won't go there again... Needless Monique survived and we decided that a massage would be most beneficial. Well ! After a couple of Chinese beer and a bottle of wine which we must say were fantastic, we traipsied over to our massagers to iron out our kinks and puckers. Iron is the least of what occurred. Massage in China use more than their hands.... Now that we have your attention, feet and knees and elbows and hands for bitch slaps are the norm. After a 2 hour slapping, massaging, pulling, & kneeding, then flipping us over and doing it all over again, we experienced an out of body experience and have since been walking on air. The back aches and jet lag gone, we were ready for another beer. And by the way, their beers are "pint size". Supper offered Spicy pigs feet, spicy chicken claws and duck jaws. Mahnummy. Drank more beer.

Melanie has met her roomie, Lauren from Peterborough who has been travelling through Asia for the last 4 months and is joined by her Mom and Step Dad who just got married. Yep, they're on their honeymoon. Us single one's decided to rub their Buddha bellies for luck. Tomorrow we meet the rest of our travelling Wilbery's and hopefully they're not all on their honeymoons. Need to talk to people! Glad to have found out that the train we're taking to Lhasa is a "climatized" one to help with the altitude change. Can't wait - we'll all be in a love circle sucking back some oxygen signing Kumbaya. But first things first. The Great China Wall and Tienemen Square for starters on Monday.

Until then, Peace Out.