So shortly before I left for China I found out that my high school friend Todd Lane was going to be passing through Shanghai a week or so after my arrival. And we made tentative plans to meet up when he arrived in Shanghai. Todd has been backpacking around southeast Asia for the past 5 or so weeks. After we met up he still had one more week of his trip remaining before heading back home to Seattle. I was super excited to see Todd because I hadn't seen him since Christmas time!

After a slightly confusing and delayed meet up, we finally found each other outside of the 2nd largest Apple store in Shanghai. Since I am still a relative newbie in Shanghai I dragged Kevin along with me so he could help me show Todd around a bit. Since we met up pretty close to The Bund we walked down to the river so Todd could check out the Shanghai skyline. Then Todd told us he wanted to buy some cheap but quality clothes, so Kevin took us to this huge market place that was in a subway station. It was just a maze of stores all selling cheap nock-off brand items. We found a couple work shirts for Todd and had quite the frustrating time negotiating the price down but finally got it down to an agreeable price. It is really amazing what the store owners originally want customers to pay, and an unknowing tourtist could easily spend 3 times as much as they should on an item.

After we walked around the market for a while mainly just window shopping, we decided to go to dinner. And despite having just been there several days earlier, we took Todd to Hai Di Lao. It really is just such a fun experience that I could not think of a better place to take him. And I am pretty sure that he had a great time and I know Kevin and I were not going to complain about going again. I got Todd to try some Mu Er which for those of you who do not know, is a type of fungus. Its got a very smooth texture but is quite crunchy! For most Asians, Mu Er is a tasty treat. I have had several friends over the years try it and havnt had much success with people liking it. But Todd was hooked! He even went back for seconds. Kevin and I also got Todd hooked on these melon flavored popcicles. Seriously, SO GOOD! I have had at least one almost everyday. It's just so hard to resist such a tasty cold treat when its so hot out!

The next day, I met up with Todd again and we went exploring Shanghai by our selves. First we went to this shopping mall that was built in the 30's completely out of cement. I'm not sure many people know that Shanghai actually has a ton of amazing architecture. This building was no exception. Each floor of the building was built kind of like a wagon wheel with spiral staircases connecting the floors. At the top there was a big event room with a glass floor. I think it would be an amazing place to have a party. It was pretty hot out so naturally I wanted a popcicle. The bad thing about those melon popcicles I mentioned earlier is that #1 they are like the most expensive popcicle in China ringing in at 8 rmb and #2 not all the little stores have them! It's mainly just the bigger chain convenience stores that carry them. So this point of the day marked the beginning of our search for these melon popcicles.

From the 30's shopping mall, we continued to another tourist attraction called Tian Di Fang. We stopped at every store we saw that had an ice cream freezer to check for those melon popcicles but had no success. Tian Di Fang is a large cluster of 2 story apartment buildings that have all had the first floor converted into stores! This was another great place to wander around and look at little trinkets and souvenir type items. Now that I think about it I might have mentioned this same place in a previous post, my uncle took me when I first arrived. After wandering a bit we started to get a bit hungry. There were a lot of restaurants we could have eaten at in Tian Di Fang, but they were all expensive tourist trappy places. So instead we wandered the streets around Tian Di Fang looking for a more local restaurant. The main problem we had though is that we couldnt read any of the menues. But finally we found a small restaurant with an english menu that was more about the price range we were looking for. And of course, the food was delicious.

After we ate we decided that we would HAVE to have one last melon popcicle before we went our separate ways. And after having been searching for several hours, we were desperate enough to type in the name of a convenience store we knew would have it into my phone. I hope this expresses to you how good these popcicles are. I am actually craving one right now as I am writing about them. Drool, drool, droooool. So after searching high and low for hours, we finally got our melon popcicles. mmmmmmmm