So beautiful a flower. It more need your love.

The fourth was relatively uneventful. We went to the West Lake, which at night was hot, crowded, and uneventful. I need to go back during the day when there are more things to see/do. We stood around for awhile waiting for these fountains with lights and water to start their show, and I have to say I wasn't impressed.

All the Americans wanted to go to a bar, and all the Chinese roommates and I wanted to go find lots of food, so we first took the Americans to a bar, dropped them off there with a roommate, and then we went and found lots of meats on sticks. I am a big fan of the kabob style food, though on the way I almost went and tried the Medival themed McDonald's. Check this thing out:
We got some more tea that night. It definitely wasn't anywhere near as tasty or weird as the tea I got on Thursday with the raw egg in it, but I guess that means it was also safer.

In any case, we went to bed relatively early on the night of the fourth since we wanted to leave early the next morning. JJ and Bob left for their destinations before us, but we ran into them at the bus station.
I think JJ is trying to build a house out of pens, or maybe just hammer that pen into the table. Whatever the case, things got very boring waiting for our respective buses to arrive. We eventually engaged in some arm wrestling competitions, doing our best to further any stereotypes the people around us had about Americans being competitive and/or violent. Oh yeah, we are those guys. Since we can't sing English, we are 'those guys' that sing the guitar riff of Back in Black or the Rocky theme song as we walk into the gym. Bus stops are no exception. JJ came to a draw with one guy's roommate, and I demolished my roommate in such a convincing way that no one else would arm wrestle me. I guess that makes me that champion of Chinese Bus Stop Arm Wrestling?

We eventually got to Qiandaohu, I won't go into the length of the bus ride or any of that nonsense. The only thing worth mentioning is the fun process of getting a hotel. I would hide around the corner while my roommate went in to bargain. All the hotels write 500 yuan for a single room, but even if you are a foreigner you are expected to bargain and get it down to at least 300. I would hide because it would invariably be at least 100 yuan cheaper if they didn't know I was staying there, too.

I found heads of garlic in the store that I chose to buy for a snack. They were preserved in some type of vinegar to add taste and make them easy to peel. They were not good.

We couldn't do anything that afternoon since we got there too late to get on the last boat heading out, so we basically sat in our room eating KFC and watching the Chinese State Sponsored version of animal planet, namely a long program about dinosaurs. It - was -awesome. Probably the best part of the trip. We sat there teaching each other the names of the dinosaurs that came on screen in our respective language, and I'm pretty sure that KFC was the best thing I've ever tasted in my entire life. I guess you can say that in a culinary sense I very much miss home sometimes.

The next day was long, hot, and not rewarding. The Qiandaohu lake is advertised as some of the cleanest, prettiest water in all of China. The Nongfu Springs water and other famous companies all bottle their water here. The water, however, was anything but clean and pretty. I attached the pictures that didn't have pollution, but you can still see some of it in the monkey statue picture. The water was just full of trash. The tour guide said it was because it rained recently and lots of trash somehow got washed into the lake, but this was out of control. I've never seen so much random trash in water before. Hats, basketballs, shoes, bottles, cartons, styrofoam, everything was floating out there. There were probably just as many small islands of trash as actual islands, it was disgusting. I highly recommend not going there. The weather was also pretty hot, it got gross pretty fast.

The good part of the tour was the random Chinese people and the Chinese couple we encountered. As for Chinese people, there was one girl wearing a Viagra shirt just as happy as could be with no idea as the meaning. Actually, it was more like a Viagra baseball jersey. It blew the mind. Another girl was wearing these weird tennis shoe heel hybrids. But best of all was the family we sat with. It was a Chinese couple from America and a guy from Singapore traveling together. They at first tried speaking English to me, but eventually we spoke mostly in Chinese. It was odd, they alternated between English and Chinese a lot amongst each other. The husband was from East Malaysia originally, the wife Taiwan, and the traveling partner from Singapore. They talked about their children and how they don't want to travel to China with them or learn Chinese or about Chinese culture, and when my roommate and I opted not to eat food since it was too expensive they ordered extra and insisted we eat. On a side note, Chinese know how to stir fry a pumpkin and holy hot damn is it good. In any case, they basically treated my like their child on vacation with them the entire time, it was actually quite fun. We all road a cab together from the harbor back to the bus station, then we all rode the same bus back to Hangzhou. They said they lived in Houston, but I probably won't see them ever again. They were the bright part of what my roommate and I agree was an otherwise excessively hot and disappointing trip.

On the up side, I did get a picture of this sweet statue. The islands were all themed. We went to the monkey island, the ostrich island, and a bunch of other islands that don't really translate well.

Real monkeys. I have lots of videos of the monkeys just running around. The cutest was a mom hanging one handed from a tree, the kid hanging from its stomach, catching food that was tossed to it with one hand and eating it. The most entertaining, however, were the children that got scared by the monkeys running free. Only in China can you take a boat to an island where there are 20 monkeys running around feet from you. The children screamed and cried and I was extremely entertained. This was topped by the child who while trying to feed a peacock on one of the islands enraged it and got chased around for a good 2 minutes, which in turn was topped by the child who got tricked into riding on an Ostrich. His parents, in what I'm guessing was an attempt at a surprise they in some deranged state of mind decided a child would enjoy, made him cover his eyes then carried him around the fence, into the place where a tamed Ostrich sat for taking pictures, and then placed him on the Ostrich. He opened his eyes and looked around, slightly confused. The Ostrich turned its head backwards to look at him, and the child screamed as loud as I've ever heard any child scream right at its face. The ostrich didn't even flinch, that thing must have been drugged to the high heavens, but the child ran for dear life. That is years and years of therapy in the making right there. He will never trust his parents to surprise him again.

And this is but one of the many excellent Engrish photos I am gathering. So beautiful a flower. It more need your love.
There is so much more I feel I should probably be writing, but I am getting tired rapidly. Thus, to distract you and let me bring this to a close, here is a picture of the fish on one of the islands whom, after what must be years of tourist visits, follow tourists around expecting food.