Street Market

I typed a long post yesterday about the Pedestrian Street we visited in Hangzhou. I was typing on Matt's phone, and it lost the message since I had attached too many photos. I am blogging from my iPad mini and having to send it through email, so it limits my editing that I can do with each post. It also makes typing long posts a pain, but I am up early before anyone else, so I might as well try again.

I have already regretted not taking pictures of more of the sights of China. Like the fried whole crab on a stick. We saw a lady eating one, and she would bite off a piece, chew for a while, and then spit the shell in a bag. Another sight is the street vendors selling stinking tofu, yes that is what it is called. It smells like a dumpster on a hot summer day. Our guide said that if you like it, it smells good. She also took us to a pharmacy for Chinese medicine. The older generation still prefers Chinese medicine over western medicine. This pharmacy was in a building that is over 100 years old, and their best seller was ginseng root. It was very expensive, and it is used in tea. We had a sample, but it didn't have much flavor. We saw a little boy in split pants walk up to a tree and "water" it. I laughed as some things about little boys are universal!

During our last stay in Guangzhou, we were at the Garden hotel. It is a very upscale hotel in a modern part of the city. We had access to many restaurants like Subway, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, a Mexican, Italian, and Thai restaurant. This time, we are at the Holiday Inn Shifu. It is walking distance to Shamian Island, but we haven't seen many restaurants we are familiar with.

Yesterday, we walked to the island. From the hotel, we had to walk through a pet market and a spice market. It is like pet smart on one street and whole foods on the other, China style. We could have gotten fish, turtles, birds, salamanders, kittens, mice, or dogs. At the spice market, I was suckered into buying some tiger balm, but we could have gotten dried sea horses, ginseng, dried frogs, some sort of animal legs, mushrooms, and a number of other things. Couldn't recognize. At least there wasn't any stinking tofu.