Some pictures --- still in Shanghai

Still in Shanghai and will be for another two days. Atually today we're headed to Suzhou (pron. soo-jow) to see the gardens built on silk money. I wouldn't normally be down to see gardens all day but at least one is supposed to consist of optical illusions and another one is listed in '1001 Things To See Before You Die.' The following day we'll see more of Shanghai before leaving that night on a train to Nanjing. I really want to see the museum on the Japanese war atrocities and a few other things of historial significance.

Until we looked into it yesterday, we were planning the next leg of our trip through Hong Kong. I know that it's part of China now so I imagined it would be easy to visit. Wrong. We both have single-entry visas and while you don't need a visa to see Hong Kong, you do need either a new one to re-enter China or a multiple-entry visa. So, since Hong Kong is expensive and is going to be a pain the in ass to see, we're skipping it. Instead we're going from Nanjing to Guilin to boat down the Li River. After we kill a day or two doing that, we're going to Nanning close to the Vietnamese border to get our next visas. We have to be in Hanoi by the 20th (ish) to pick up a friend of Starr's who is going to travel with us to Thailand. From Thailand, Starr and her will decide what to do next, but my mind is made up to continue on to Myanmar, India, Pakistan and the Middle East.

Yesterday we went to the Shanghai Museum for some art and history, before getting lunch at the Steak King. So fucking good and it cost us $3 each. After that we walked through the old city, which was very Beijing-hutongish, and we both bought some touristy crap. I got a map of Shanghai in 1936 and some old sepia-tone photographs of the city at the same time. Starr got this metallic turtle locket thing. We made our way through some other parts of the city, just walking around until we got coffee on the roof of a Starbucks in People's Square (the second picture is from the roof). We'll see the gardens today and try to take in an acrobatics performance tonight.

Again, I miss you all and I'll see you when I'm broke.