Thursday, January 24, 2008

Today was relatively uneventful. We had a late start due to a late night. Well, two of us did, anyway. The third - the Brit - was down with severe food poisoning. That's two down, two to go. Who's next?

Our original plan was to go to the Tsingtao Beer Brewery and get the full tour but the Chinese friend of a friend who was to be our guide suddenly decided we wouldn't have enough time even though we were perfectly on schedule. So instead we drove by in a taxi and took pictures of the front gate.



An interesting side note: the street the brewery was on translated to English as "The Beer Street". On either side of the street were bars upon bars, breweries upon breweries, anything and everything to do with beer for about a block.

Afterwards we headed to the underground market. The perfect place to buy absolutely anything a materialistic heart could desire. Besides electronics anyway. Oh, and for ridiculously cheap prices.

Case in point: a Gucci belt and this tacky Canadian pirate belt ('cause Canada is rife with pirates. In fact pirates are a national symbol in Canada) for a total of 65RMB ($9.15CAD).



A funky watch that shows all the inner workings and mechanics, for about $12CAD.



And uber stylish long john underwear that made me feel about as sexy as roadkill.



Eventually, after eating Thai food and wandering aimlessly, we stopped in at a Starbucks where we decided we'd make a goal of visiting at least one Starbucks in each city we stayed in - provided there was one present.

And we finished the day by enjoying another night of live entertainment at the New York Bar.