Cheap Chinese watches and avocado doughnuts

Well, that was a long two weeks! Seems like weeks and weeks ago that we left for China!  I've never been to China before so didn't know what to expect. I know I like Chinese food though so was looking forward to that!!

We arrived in China on Monday at about 8am and had a rare day off! I've been hearing about the Chinese markets so went to check those out! Crazy place.  As soon as we walked in we hear; "Watch, Pen? Good price for you".  No thank you... When I walk into a shop and someone follows me around or tries to sell me things it makes me immediately walk out. Not a good start when I've only just walked in the door of a mall and haven't even made it to a shop and it's already started! I had no idea what was yet to come...

The rows and rows of individually lined up shops were full of clothes, handbags, shoes, watches, electronic accessories, anything and everything really!  Not being a massive girly shopaholic, I don't tend to rummage for hours and hours. I'll casually stroll past shops and if something catches my eye and I like it then I'll buy it.  Not quite realising what this place was all about yet, I looked at a bag for my friend and asked the price, to receive an answer of "you look first, then I give you price". Ok.... I'm looking at it.... Now tell me the price!!! She told me a price eventually, about 20 times more than it should have been and I'd already decided that actually I didn't like it so said, actually it's ok thanks I don't want it. "you tell me price then"... Ermm no, I don't like it. Then I got shouted at, "you ask price and don't buy, why you waste my time" Woah, didn't realise I had to buy everything I looked at... Moving swiftly on...

It was pretty hard to look at anything without someone trying to force you to buy it. Mix this with tiredness from a 12 hour flight and jetlag... My impatience shone through! After an hour or so of looking at random things, buying an iPad case, a jacket and a bag, trying to escape from back door cupboards (more about that later!) and generally arguing with every shop we walked into, my patience ran out! We left and found a local place for lunch.  I don't think they get many foreigners there as we were stared at like a bunch of ghosts had just walked in! Then trying to order was another matter! My food ended up being quite nice though!  The others may not agree about theirs, with their gristle curry, but I was quite happy!  We then went to Yu gardens and wondered around, finding random alleys with market stalls, yet again where foreigners probably don't wander into. I like doing this, beats finding a mcdonalds and wishing i was at home! The array of live frog, chicken feet, snake and god knows what for sale really did not look appealing. I'm sure our facial expressions highly amused the locals though! We ended up having coffee and doughnuts as our jetlag set in a small 'fashionable type' coffee shop. Ever heard of avocado flavour doughnuts? You have now! Oh and we did try some local shu mai and egg custard cakes from the street stalls :) not quite as yummy as doughnuts though :)

So day of fun over and it's time to remember why we were actually there. To go build a garage and run a car and win a race... I liked Sepang Circuit. Although the garages were huge and took ages to cable up, it was quite a nice place to work in.  Some chocolate eggs appeared by carrier pigeon to me during the week too which made me smile! :) yum yum

I'm gonna fast forward to Saturday night now, our next few hours off...  Back to the market again, after realising my impatience got the better of me and I didn't really buy much, I decided I'd get a few things this time. So straight to the handbags. "you want bag? You come".... I follow this lady through to the back of her little shop where she shuts the door and locks it. I'm surrounded by empty shelves with a few of the same handbags as outside. She shows me a few and I ask for another colour. This opens a whole new door, literally. Enter Narnia... The empty shelves slide away and I find myself in yet another little room looking at more bags. I paid about a tenth of the price she tried to get out of me for 3 bags and then escaped the secret passage to handbagville.  The first time this happened I was actually quite scared as I had no idea what I'd do if they got aggressive... I walked through Narnia into the Secret Garden and found watches, where a guy did get quite angry that I wouldn't pay 300 pounds for a cheap fake watch. Good thing I had some of the guys with me or I would have been quite intimidated!  A quick hour of shopping and arguing before we got kicked out at closing time and we went and found an awesome hot pot restaurant. I love hot pots, sukiyaki, shabu shabu (Japanese dishes) so I was very happy! We ate SO much! Awesome! Could have sat there eating all night! But we had a race to get to....

I've uploaded a few photos to my Flickr account. I didn't take too many... :( Tiredness got in the way of any creativity this week!

I'll stop babbling on about markets, cheap watches and food now and let you wake up :)