Saturday in Zhuhai & Gong Bei

We had lunch at a restaurant today, with our friend Perry from the TEFL class, called "Cornfield Coffee". There are several of these in Zhuhai. They are "Western" style restaurants. They are fairly upscale, and expensive for this area. They serve everything on the menu from steak and chicken, to frog, ham, egg and intestine sandwiches. They also have waffles, all sorts of sweet and milk drinks, beers and ice wines. The servers, the two times that we ate there, really try to speak English, which is not that common around here. The place is obviously fancy because even though it still has squat toilets in the bathrooms, it actually has soap and paper towels!

Perry, who grew up in Australia, but is of Chinese descent, helped us get on the right bus and we went to Gong Bei, Southern Zhuhai. We had to go, literally, through a 2 mile long tunnel through a large mountain to get to this part of the city. It is right on the Macau border, only about 20 minutes from where we are staying. We could see Macau, but did not have our passports with us to cross over the border there. We will probably not have a chance to do so until our course ends.

Once in Gong Bei, the large buildings and snarled traffic, teeming with people, had us visibly observing plenty of smog and pollution. Being that we are on the water, and surrounded by mountains, as well as there being much haze, causes an oppressive amount of humidity!
We went to a literal underground market that crowded about a thousand stalls and stores in to a not very large area. There, one can negotiate and haggle prices for everything. We bought Marie two pair of very nice shoes for about $12 USD total. I was going to buy rip-off Nikes and Adidas for a total of $20-30 USD for both pairs that would have been around $120 in the US, but the largest sizes they came in were 9.5! So, the shoes literally did not fit....

While walking around, we were reminded more of a China that we expected to see. It was very crowded and almost overwhelming. Zhuhai has a "mere" 1.5 million residents, and this was the crowded downtown. We can't even imagine Shanghai, which boasts well over 20 million!

It began to downpour when we left, which caused the humidity to subside a bit. We caught a cab back to Zhuhai. There, we ran in to a market near our apartment to escape the rain. There were hundreds of people killing, skinning, slicing, gutting, and doing all sorts of other lovely things to fish, chicken and other animals that people picked out on the spot. We did not want to get too close, as parts fly all over. It would be like a Gallagher concert, without the rain coats!

We then dropped our stuff off at our rooms, and proceeded back to this Net Cafe. We are seated next to two Chinese boys that have been chain smoking and spitting intermittently on the floor. It is hard to get over this disgusting habit. Jon tries to brace himself for the first time he may be spit on directly, and will need to try to restrain himself from punching someone very hard!

We bought a 35mm camera on Friday. We will try to take pics to download to a CD after the course, and upload, after we get settled, to this blog. We will definitely try to buy a good digital as soon as we can find it, too.

Until then, take care, be well, and watch out for spit and fish parts!