Day 12: A Day With the Girls
Breakfast at the hotel, buffet style. I just stuck to some American basics. And boiled peanuts.
Reminded me of Dad, who introduced us to boiled peanuts in Hawaii :)
Phil left for a long day at the theater, so I made plans with some of the dancers.
Lena is in the middle, and Devonna is on the right. We headed out on a pretty walk to run some errands. We needed an ATM, a suitcase, hairspray, hairnets, eyelash glue (for their shows), and of course anything cute we found along the way.
This is a really pretty city. Different from all the others. There are still buildings and high rises everywhere, cars, smog, people. But it feels a little more spread out. Like L.A. or something.
Then we took a taxi to Lord Bao’s Park. This place was so beautiful!! It had …
A temple as the centerpiece …
Cool doors …
Pretty flowers …
A lake …
And … paddleboats!!
We took a spin around the lake. It was so peaceful and beautiful, yet right in the middle of the city.
The architecture around the lake was very quaint and traditional.
The bridges were my favorite.
The greenery was stunning.
The view of the temple was much better.
We encountered various other structures along the way.
We had a great time!
Our orange life vests were so fashionable, too.
After that little excursion, we wandered back to the main street. We could’ve gone into the temple, but we would’ve been rushed, and sometimes you’re just not in a museum-type mood, you know? We were in a let’s-eat mood! We found a bakery with some promising things.
It was good, especially the desserts!
Call was at 4:00 in the lobby, so we went back. The first view of the theater, from the bus, was interesting …
Even more interesting from the front.
But, they had a water show!!!
The lobby was gorgeous, as always.
Show went on as usual, then packing up the stage, then loading the bus. Here we are, tired and sweaty.
We ate dinner, and all of us were ready to go out tonight. We didn’t have to be up early the next morning. HOORAY!! We headed out on what turned into quite an adventure! We had to take 3 cabs because there were 12 of us. All three drivers had the address to an Expat bar, called Madison Bar. None of the drivers could find it, we all got separated. We had them just drop us off at a coffee shop to ask for directions. We found some guys just chillin’ and asked if we could take our picture with them.
Heehee.
Well, no luck here, so we hailed another cab, he drove around looking for it, but had the brains to make some calls. The bar was closed, so that’s why no one could find it. He then started taking us back to our hotel, so we thought. Someone yelled “Holiday Inn” from the other cab. But then we happened to see Ben and Ashely walking the street (who were in a totally different cab), and we got dropped off there. They were going to the Holiday Inn in the middle of town. It had an Expat bar called “Charlie’s Bar”, as in Charlie Chaplin. It was kind of a trip how we somehow all ended up together. Well, Ben’s cell phone helped too. I guess someone in the other cab had the driver call Ben’s Chinese cell and we somehow all ended up at the same place. It was fun!
We still had a few blocks to walk, and we stumbled upon a market in the middle of a street. We refer to it now as “The Chinese Black Market” because a) it was like midnight and it was in full swing and b) Ian (the cellist) found a 1,000 mW laser pointer. It wasn’t really a black market, but it was definitely a good place to shop!!
Ok, on to Charlie’s Bar.
We were the only ones there! The bartender spoke a little bit of English, and the prices were very high. As in, they were Western prices. You know, like $5 for a bottle of beer, instead of the 50 cents we’ve been paying ;) Phil and I split a bottle of chilled white wine from China. It was delicous!
Group pic time! This is all of the band, 1 singer, 2 dancers (The director and her assistant for the tour).
It was actually very ambient lighting in there. Here’s what it really looked like:
They had a foosball table, too!
And that was Charlie’s bar.
Goodnight.