Thank you.

To my reader(s?!),

Thanks for following our journey and seeing us through these last two years.

Believe it or not, this little blog kept me sane on many days. It kept me busy and gave me purpose when I wasn’t sure what my purpose was. I hope you enjoyed reading about the experience, the travels, the ups and downs. But most of all, I hope I’ve done you proud by keeping Shanghai’dLex alive and engaging.

Before I sign off for good, I should also thank my husband for giving us this amazing opportunity. There’s no one else I would have wanted by my side as I expatriated and explored this corner of the world. Who would have guessed that we’d spend our first years of marriage in China? If this is any indication as to what our future holds, I can’t wait to find out what else lies ahead (even if that means staying put!). To my constant translator, my travel buddy, my tireless adventurer, I love you.

For the last time, zhoumo kuaile!

With love and “xie xie,”
Alexis

The Final Interview

You may remember that I asked a few of our visitors to answer some questions after returning home from their trip to China (my mom, Kira and David, and Hanni). I thought it fitting to include one last interview with Mike, my fellow long-term "visitor."

What will you take away from this experience?
A puppy, two bicycles, and a giant terracotta soldier. Yes, I am a child.

What’s your fondest memory from the last two years? 
Being able to travel to so many great countries and amazing places within a two- to three-hour flight. Snowboarding in Japan and diving in the Maldives were incredible. But getting Shima is a pretty fond memory.

If you had to do it all over, what would you do differently?
I can't think of anything, actually. We did pretty well the last two years.

What were your best and worst culinary experiences?
There are just too many to count: discovering fried soup dumplings and creppuritos; any meal in Japan; having crawfish étouffée made by Austin Hu from Madison in the middle of rice fields after riding with the bike crew for more than 50 miles to Chongming Island [he's talking about this experience]. Sadly, the worst experience might be in Vietnam where we could not find a great grilled pork banh mi, even after five sandwiches in a one-hour period... more disappointing though than "the worst."

Some people say that you never feel more American than when you live abroad. Would you agree? 
I would. I claim Fresno pretty hard, but since no one really knows where that is here, I was claiming the USA. I purchased my first full-size American flag after moving here (from and made in the U.S., of course), and I have also found myself increasingly looking for American-made products (from companies like Filson and Phil Wood, for example).

Do you think your experience as a Chinese-American was any different from, say, mine?
Speaking Chinese made a huge difference, but it was also difficult because I'm illiterate (I can't read or write Chinese characters). People assume that I'm able to read signs and menus, and everyone also thinks I look and speak funny.

What will be your last meal in Shanghai and your first meal back in SF?
We'll probably eat soup dumplings the night before we leave, and maybe grab a creppurito on the way to the airport. In San Francisco, I'll probably have to grab a burrito or In-N-Out as our first meal back, although given the timing and the location of our temporary place, maybe Brenda's French Soul Food.

What are you looking forward to the most about being back home? 
Fresh air, friends, and snowboarding more. Or, snowboarding with friends in fresh air!

What will you miss?
Our friends here and tuesday night bike rides (400+ people on my last one!).

Would you do it again?
As long as my wonderful wife and dog are down for more adventures... f*ck yeah!

I'm down! Paris'dLex has a good ring to it, don't you think? But home first. 

Shanghai Bests (According to Us)

So if you’re ever in Shanghai…

Best Neighborhood: The Former French Concession, hands down. Tree-lined streets; cafes, bars, and restaurants; home to the Avocado Lady and the U.S. Consulate. I admit, I’ve gone days (maybe weeks) without leaving the ‘hood.

Best Museum for Guests: Urban Planning. It provides a great overview of this ever-expanding, ever-changing metropolis.

Best Restaurant for Guests: Lost Heaven. It features dishes from the Yunnan Province of China, a melding of flavors from Thailand, Laos, Burma, and China. I never managed to cover this for Fatty Tuesday (you’ll have to forgive me; I was entertaining, after all), but the food is consistently good and the decor, exquisite.

Best Fine Dining: Madison’s, my favorite, probably because it brings me back home to SF with high quality ingredients, creative dishes, and an elegant rustic interior.

Best Local Spot for Spicy Chinese: Spicy Moment. Get the ribs, the cabbage, and the eggplant with green beans. You won’t be disappointed.

Best Soup Dumplings: Din Tai Fung, if you’re going fancy; Jia Jia Tang Boa, if you’re going local.

Best Mexican: El Coyota, currently a pop-up next door to the Avocado Lady. As good as Mexican gets in Shanghai.

Best BBQ: Stubb’s. As good as BBQ gets in Shanghai.

Best Crepurrito Lady: The one on Wulumuqi; though to be fair, I haven’t gone to any others.

Best Boba (aka bubble tea): These aren’t just for Asian-American teenagers. My go-to spot is outside the Jingan Temple subway station, across the street from the temple.

Best Expensive Grocer: Fields, although I recently tried Kate & Kimmi and would recommend it.

Best Cheap Grocer: The Avocado Lady (of course!) who supplies much more than avocadoes (other foreign necessities like cereal and spices; pasta and Pelligrino).

Best Bars: Senator Saloon (an authentic speakeasy, complete with a friendly American cop-turned-bartender) and El Coctel (if you're more the lounge type).

Best Shopping (other than faking it at the Fake Market or making it at the Fabric Market): Spin for ceramics. Our place is outfitted in it.

Best Massage: Skip the chains like Congen and Dragon Fly; go to Zen Massage on Wuyuan.

Best Bike Shop: Factory Five. Those guys are quickly becoming legends. We’ll be able to say, “we knew them when…”.

Best Yoga Studio: Yoga Garden, my little sanctuary, my home away from home. I will miss this community like crazy.

Closing In

As the end draws near, I thought it’d be appropriate to recap our Shanghai experience with one last “by the numbers” post.

1: Number of family members added to the Wang Clan while living in China (Shima!)

2: Number of Thanksgivings hosted in Shanghai (2012 and 2013)

18: Number of articles I wrote for City Weekend

14: Number of (amazing!) friends and family members who came to visit us

12: Number of countries we visited during our two years in Asia. Not bad…

Thousands: Number of miles and hotel points racked up (woot!)

A few: Number of sentences I can manage to formulate in Mandarin

Lots: Number of soup dumplings consumed (with more to be eaten in the next week)

On One Hand: Number of good friends we made here in Shanghai. Just enough.

Countless: The memories :)


(You might also like: Great Wallin' and Thanksgiving Success)

Zhoumo kuaile!

I hope you enjoyed this week's recap of our trip to Vietnam.

Tomorrow, we're hosting a Goodbye Shanghai/Come Take Our Sh*t! party for our friends. Besides food and drinks, we'll be having an indoor yard sale, except the stuff will be free, first-come, first-served.

I can't believe time is ticking so quickly.

Coming soon
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Ending North: Hanoi/Halong Bay

After surviving our serious adventure in the jungle of Central Vietnam, we set out for Hanoi. Our time in the city was short, but we found it to be both quaint (tree-lined streets) and crazy (traffic!).

Mike and I splurged and stayed the night at the Hotel Metropole, a classic hotel with a storied past. It's hosted presidents and prime ministers, actors and  activists (like Jane Fonda and Joan Baez), entertainers and executives (a Mr. M. Zuckerberg, for one). More interestingly, the hotel has a Vietnam War bunker that was lost and rediscovered only a few years ago (unfortunately, we didn't have time to tour it).

We left Hanoi early the next morning for Halong Bay. After a three-hour drive, we embarked for the cruise portion of the trip. In a word borrowed from a friend who's been, the cruise was very "Disney." They ushered a group of 18 of us on board, and adhered to a strict schedule of meals, tours, swimming, and kayaking. Having just come from the caves where we saw no other tourists and the agenda was more relaxed, the cruise seemed cheesy and overly orchestrated. Plus, I got stung by a jellyfish, which didn't help matters (the water was infested with them!). And no, Mike didn't have to pee on me; come to find out, drenching the wounds in vinegar and rubbing them with lime take the sting away. But the scenery was nice and I appreciated some downtime to read and relax.

You may remember that our flight from Hanoi to Shanghai got cancelled, so our journey home was slightly more complicated (read: annoying). After getting back into town after the cruise, we left for the airport. We flew from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City and arrived at around midnight, slept a few hours in a hotel, then went back to the airport for our 7:30 a.m. flight back home.

Although I don't think I need to go back, I'm glad I went to Vietnam. I had wanted to go and I think we made the most of our trip there. For a few more photographs, check out my Flickr album.

Central Vietnam: Dong Hoi/Phong Nha

We left Saigon very early Sunday morning to fly to Dong Hoi. From there, we drove about 40 minutes to Phong Nha -- a small, sleepy, and impoverished town where cattle roam the streets and the main activity is finding ways to beat the heat.

Kyle and Ryan met us there, and the next morning, the four of us joined Oxalis Adventure Tours for an initial 70-kilometer drive to a small village. From there, we trekked 3.5km through fields and a river until reaching the mouth of the first cave where we stopped for lunch.

The rest of the day, we hiked, we swam, we explored. The depths of the caves looked like the surface of the moon, and we were Armstrong and Aldrin. The grounds seemed almost sacred with few explorers having come before us.

Camping in the jungle of Vietnam was far from glamorous. It was sweat and bug spray, hammocks that were like small coffins, and a makeshift outhouse infested with wasps and mosquitoes. We made it though! (And, as cool as it was, I think we were all glad that we hadn't opted for the two-nighter.) 

The next day, we explored one last cave before returning to civilization. Ken Cave was my favorite. Its mouth was a pool of clear freshwater. We jumped in and swam, floating on our backs on occasion to peer at the ceiling, which looked like coral at the bottom of the ocean. Once we reached darkness, our headlamps caught light of spiders and bats and formations hundreds of millions of years old. 

The trek back to town was pretty treacherous thanks to the heat, the mosquitos, and the lack of a proper trail. Although they were accompanied by a hot bowl of pho, cold beers at the finish line were much welcomed (and well deserved, I'd say).  

Fatty Tuesday: Vietnamese Food

Food wasn't the only reason why we chose to travel to Vietnam, but it was a big motivator. We were excited to try pho and banh mis from the source. Come to find out, good Vietnamese food is hard to come by in Vietnam.

Our first dinner in Saigon was a Lonely Planet "top choice." It was more so "meh," so much so that I couldn't tell you what we ordered 'cause I can't remember what we ate. The next day, we tried pho at a local hotspot (literally) aptly named Pho Hoa. In 90-degree heat and 75-percent humidity, I couldn't bring myself to take down a hot bowl of steaming beef noodle soup. Not surprisingly, Mike took one for the team and I got to try some of his. The broth was delicious; I could have held the bowl to my mouth and drank the whole thing myself, even in the heat and humidity.

The food tour on night two was the highlight of our foodie adventures. Tiger Tours took us first to a make-your-own-summer-rolls joint where we wrapped grilled pieces of marinated pork and beef in rice paper, adding lettuce, fresh herbs, and pickled veggies. This was our favorite. The second stop required a more open mind: besides grilled shrimp, we sampled goat udder and crocodile curry. Goat udder? Chewy and not a favorite. Crocodile? Also chewy and similar to (you guessed it) chicken. The third restaurant specialized in seafood: the chili crab and the small, delicate scallops were the most memorable of our dishes there. We ended on a sweet note with a simple flan for me and a coconut-mango combination for Mike.

Summer rolls; goat udder and okra; chili crab; crocodile curry

Once we got to Hanoi, we made it our mission to find a banh mi since we hadn't had one up to that point in the trip. We tried several and grew more disappointed after every one. Slices of gelatinous meat and pâté replaced the grilled pork and pickled vegetables we had been expecting. We all agreed: we couldn't wait to get home to get ourselves a good banh mi.

Our one dinner in Hanoi slightly made up for our food losses. Madame Hien served up a foie gras pho that won't likely be forgotten. But overall, I have to say, we weren't too impressed with what we ate. Perhaps expectations were set too high. Perhaps we just didn't know where to go.

Southern Starting Point: Saigon

Expectations were low for Saigon (aka, Ho Chi Minh City, HCMC). I hadn't heard good things; most of them warnings about savvy thieves on motorcycles cutting the straps of tourists' backpacks as they whizzed by them. But our thirty or so hours there were wisely spent and we enjoyed leg one of the trip.

We walked by Notre Dame Cathedral and a vintage post office on our way to the War Remnants Museum. American war planes and tanks (Vietnamese trophies?) were this museum's garden sculptures, encircling two sides of the plain, open-air building. Its third side was a replica of prisoners' living quarters and torture chamber, a foreshadow of the other horrors that waited to be detailed inside. The first floor covered the protests of Americans and other nationals against the U.S. Government, while the next ones documented the atrocities of the war with photographs of the maimed, the tortured, and those born with birth defects caused by the use of defoliants (chemicals like Agent Orange). By the end of it, I couldn't bear to look at another picture or read another description. Yes, the museum was terribly biased and propagandist, but I left the place feeling sick to my stomach and hoping that if I had been a child of the 60s I, too, would have stood up against such inhumanity.

One of the less horrific photographs, but just as heartbreaking, I think. 

The next tourist spot was less brutal -- the Reunification Palace, which housed the president of South Vietnam. It was a walk back in time to 1975 when communist tanks crashed through palace gates, seeing Saigon surrender to the North. The building was left just as it looked on that day.

We ended our stay in HCMC with a food tour led by two college students employed by Tiger Tours. With Mike on the back on one motorcycle and me on the other (!), we rode with them to four different spots in the city (don't worry, Mom, we wore helmets). Details coming tomorrow for Fatty Tuesday.

A flower market pit stop during the food tour

Zhoumo kuaile!

This week has been a weird one for me. I've been feeling pretty restless, with one foot firmly planted in Shanghai and the other taking an imaginary leap back home. It's the calm before the storm. It's the week before Vietnam, which is the week before we sort and pack.

Although there have been a few hurdles in preparing for Vietnam, I'm glad it's here -- the finale trip. And yes, we will be making it back to Shanghai, having to fly south before going north again, and waking up before dawn to do so.

Adventure awaits with a food tour booked in Ho Chi Minh City, an overnight cave expedition in Central Vietnam, and a cruise in Halong Bay off of Hanoi. We're meeting two of Mike's childhood friends in Phong Nha (where the caves are located), and I think I'm more worried about keeping up with the boys (from a drinking perspective) than anything else.

Enjoy the week! I'll be back with a recap.

Cruise boats in Halong Bay
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30 Days Until

We go from this...

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/165296248798556788/

... to this. 

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/165296248794608061/