Goodbye Knives and Forks

06/08/13

After a fifteen hour sleep we were up and ready to face the world. We began by braving the disgusting bathroom and having a shower which left the floor completely flooded. Safe to say we’ll be going through hundreds of air fresheners while we’re here! We then made a list of things we needed to buy for the apartment. Rory was getting really in to this and said he wanted the house to look like “Rashley Lauren”... what he really meant was Laura Ashley but who am I to belittle his new found love of interior design?!

We then made our way to headquarters where we sent a few emails and met Summer who took us to top up the electricity card for the apartment. She could hardly believe we wanted to spend 200 RMB (about £20) on electricity, so hopefully electricity is fairly cheap and that’ll last us a while. It was pretty cool, there’s a national grid office that is open 24/7 so you can top your electricity up any time which is handy as everyone pays their electricity by card. We also got two travel cards – it’s about 4p for a bus ride and 20p to go on the subway, so again we’re hoping the £5 we put on will keep us going for a few weeks. 

After heading back to the apartment, finding the local shop and discovering that the parentals can call my Chinese mobile for free we got ready and headed out for dinner. As we were flying solo tonight we decided to head back to Wanda Plaza, the big shopping centre near our apartment. We thought about hitting up Pizza Hut but in the end we went to a Chinese/Japanese restaurant which was very similar to Wagamama. The whole ordering process was a bit odd. We stood at the door, stuck two fingers up, smiled a lot and were taken to a table. They soon brought out our chopsticks and two little wooden pots full of hot liquid. We weren’t sure what this was for, we did think washing our chopsticks but after having a look at the table next to us it turns out that the Chinese just like to drink lukewarm water. When the waitress came to take our order we pointed at what we wanted and soon she arrived with our massive dinner. We both got a soup and noodle dish, Rory went for Teriyaki duck and as they were out of beef I went for ribs, which were actually fall off the bone tender and pure beaut. Two mains, fried dumplings and two waters came to £10 which is probably more than what you’d pay in traditional restaurants but it’s still a lot less than what you’d pay in a chain type restaurant at home. 

 As we were already in Wanda Plaza we went back to Carrefour and bought some more household items including an iron (for £4), a brush, a mop and a bucket. Don’t say my blog isn’t full of exciting adventures - I bet knowing that Rory and I spent five minutes trying to decipher the Chinese for floor cleaner is exactly what you were hoping to read. We also bought some kitchen items but we were pretty disappointed with the cutlery selection. We had a choice of chopsticks or spoons. We did find a few forks but there were absolutely no knives in the store! We had thought that there may be a few proper knives for cutting chicken and that sort of stuff but apparently not. There were plenty of meat cleavers locked away so who knows, we may have to learn some new techniques!