Meilan Lake and Qibao

This morning I met Jorge at Zhenping Lu Station and together we took line 7 to Meilan Lake. It took about 40 minutes and is the very last stop where many people seemed to be headed.

On arrival we were bombarded by the companies trying to sell tours and taxi drivers trying to get us to use their cars. At one point saying "bu yao" (don't want) resulted in quite a bit of aggression from them that it seemed wise to not look back and keep walking.

The weather was really good with blue skies but it was still a little humid. The lake was easy enough to find but cars and motorbikes quite annoying to keep hitting their horns trying to attract people to take their transportation.

The buildings here were very European, much like Thames Town and quite a few couples doing wedding photographs. There are backdrops and props around for these purposes too. Reading the history of this area it seemed to be based around a Nordic town.

After walking around and taking some photos we stopped into Macao Dolar which is a chain of hot pot restaurants. The service wasn't so good and they were very pushy and they spoke no English nor did their menu have any English so with my limited Chinese skills I managed to work out some food for us. I really enjoy hot pot and in total came to about 150RMB for 2 of us.

We then headed to Berlinda's place to chill for a bit before we took the metro to Qibao to look for the night markets. On arrival I was surprised it wasn't the water town I'd been told about but it was full of lights and restaurants and shopping malls. Berlinda asked several people for directions to the market but nobody seemed to know until a man on a motorcab pointed us the right way.

This was the water town and we headed over the bridge through narrow alleys filled with stalls selling souvenirs and some selling food. It was very busy and noisy but definately an experience. There were even fireworks! There were so many types of food I'd never seen before, and at times the strong smelly tofu.

After we headed back towards the metro and went to the food part of a mall and found Cloud 9 which is a Taiwanese restaurant chain that I quite like because I find the food very comforting and reminds me of home (especially happy smiley potato waffles!). Also Cloud 9 offers free wifi which is a bonus when you are out and about.