Hello I'm home!
Ah Shanghai was really so so so fun. I think I am already forgetting what we did there so I'd better try to refresh my memory.
So after our Chem paper at the airport at about 11 plus. I totally didn't sleep on the flight so while everyone else was I was watching John Tucker Must Die.
So when we reached Shanghai we had our first meal there at this food place. And Hwee you are right, the food is SO SALTY! Ew! And their xiao long baos have no soup in them and are as hard as rock. So that wasn't too good. Cos we went there on a night flight by the time it was 12 pm there it totally felt like 4 in the afternoon :/ Then then then, we went to the Shanghai masters :) :) while the mums went shopping :D
We took a cab there and were so excited coz there are like a million banners the whole way to the stadium with the players' faces on them. Also, we saw The Official Car of the ATP on the way and we couldn't stop screaming. By the way before going we made one poster. It said VAMOS RAFA, NO? It was pretty ugly but more about that later haha. So first we took a million pictures outside the stadium, then we had about an hour left before the first match so we went to get souvenirs. We got tees and Federbears and food and other stuff. Then we went to watch the matches!! =) It was like super exciting seeing the very court we'd been watching on the telly right in front of us. The first match was Nestor and Knowles vs Dunno who and dunno who. The match was kinda boring actually so when we realised that Nestor and Knowles were winning.. haha we started supporting them. And yeah, they did win, I think 6-3 6-3.
Then, the next doubles match was more interesting, it was Max Mirnyi and Jonas Bjorkman against Santoro and Zimonjic. Lisze hates Santoro. She kept going on and on about how she hates him. Personally I think he's quite cute but Zimonjic seriously looks like a terrorist!!! :o Mirnyi's serve is so good I don't think they lost a single game on his serve. So we were cheering for Bjorkman and Mirnyi while the rest of the stadium was supporting the other pair. Maybe cos Santoro looks like a short little dwarf while Mirnyi looks like a giant. But serious nearly no one was cheering for Bjorkman/Mirnyi other than us. That is Mirnyi and Bjorkman below. We got their autographs and Mirnyi has nice dimples! Okay whatever. We waited for almost 2 hours for them to show up!! And the #$%^&* security kept rushing and pushing us so the actual signing took a very short while. And everyone kept cutting the queue.
So anyway Bjorkman and Mirnyi won Santoro and Zimonjic and there was even a tiebreak so it got very exciting. May was absolutely besotted with Bjorkman. She thinks he's very handsome. (!!!) Anyway we found it pretty weird that NO ONE was supporting them the and the queue was so terribly long. I think the China people collect the players' autographs like they're collecting stamps!! We heard one of the kids there say how he'd collected Nadal and blablabla's autographs. Haolian lah!!
So after that we went to watch the Nadal- Davydenko match. Lisze refused to hold up the VAMOS RAFA, NO? poster that we made just for her! There were so many Spanish fans with drums so it was kinda annoying, and as usual, the whole stadium was against me cos EVERYONE was supporting Nadal!! Argh!
There you see Davydenko in blue, and Nadal bouncing around like a spasming energizer bunny. The moment he came on court everyone started cheering and poor Davydenko!! But seriously, now my favourite (or one of them at least) player is Davydenko because he really played so so well. His strokes are so graceful and nice and the balls he hit were like arrows!! He could return so many of Nadal's good shots and he was super fast too and he hit a lot of winners. So only May and I were cheering for him and my dad and lisze were cheering for Monkeyman Nadal. Li Sze was so embarrassed cos she sat between us and we kept shouting C'mon Davydenko and stuff like that and cheering so loudly. Everyone kept turning around to look at us and crack up laughing when they saw Lisze's poor tortured face, ehehehe but at least she had the entire stadium behind her!! Anyway they were probably kinda amazed that the whole stadium wasn't supporting Nadal. *rolls eyes* Where's the fairness in all of this?? So halfway during the match Nadal wanted a medical break and the whole stadium started doing the Wave haha. Oh and like, when the players changed their shirts on court.. like when Davydenko changed everyone was like oh whatever and when Monkeyman did they zoomed in on him and all the boys started whistling.
So despite all of our cheering, Davydenko lost in 3 sets but still it was a very good match and I really enjoyed it. We only watched a bit of the Blake- Robredo match (Robredo won!!) cos by the time Davydenko and Nadal finished it was like 10 ++++ so we were very tired having not slept at all on the plane. Lisze was very grossed out by Blake's brother who was sitting across the court. She kept staring at him and complaining about how disgusting he was, I have no idea why!! Crazy Lisze!! Haha. And this girl is damn smart lah! She'd quickly go take shower the moment we get back to the hotel at night so I have to bathe after her and by the time I finish, she'd be asleep. So I tried to wake up earlier in the morning so I could bathe first. Mwahaha! (Didn't work all the time)
The next day we went shopping. The driver Hwee recommended to us was very nice, about an hour into shopping he had to come and pick up all our shopping stuff and then we'd continue shopping again. Haha. We had a pretty nice lunch. We ate that tang bao thing where you suck the soup out of a big bao with a straw. And our dinner was good, we ate at this place with only four tables!! But the food was great.
The third day, we went to Hangzhou. It was a very long drive there, about 3 hours so we listened to music on the way and fell asleep. First we went to this temple place which was very beautiful only there were quite a lot of man-eating insects there.
Okay everything's kinda jumbled up now. I remember we asked the driver to bring us to Peace Hotel so we could use the toilets?!?? Anyway, he told us the toilets were haunted so we were like oh man serious?? I didn't see anything in the toilet though. Then when May and I took a photo like at the top of a flight of stairs, my mum was like, after that when the picture is developed you see one more person standing behind you! So, Lisze and her mom and my mom all like screamed so loudly. So embarrassing!! :( But anyway we didn't see anything. However our pictures at Xin Tian Di had a lot of orbs floating around.
We also went on a boat. I think it was in Hangzhou so anyway we stopped at a coupla islands to walk around, admire the scenery, and freeze our pants off cos it was really THAT cold! Okay now I'm really confused cos I can't remember what happened. Nanjing Lu isn't that great. We hardly bought anything from there. And er.. I bought a new prom dress? And... oh the last night there, we took a boat ride down Shanghai Tan. Or the bund. Whatever. It was freaking cold!! But we had a great view of all the fireworks!
I'm so sorry but I can't remember anything else!! Hahaha yes I'm old and senile. Anyway we have prom later so later I'm going out to do girl stuff. I'll try to remember what I do in Vietnam when I go on Thursday!!
Love, Rachel.
<3 mary