Zhengzhou Part 2 : Cultural Fiesta

The following afternoon, my aunts and cousins left, so I spent most of the day relaxing and catching up on some work. Not much happened, except for the fact that I looked after/ played with my other cousin's daughter for a while. She's only two years old, but she's quite the character since she recently learned to speak. At first, she was really shy, but by the end of the day, she ended up sharing some of her snacks with me and calling me "uncle." For dinner, we headed out to the famous Nightmarket of Kaifeng, where vendors sold many delicacies. I saw the usual: bbqed beef, bbqed lamb, but also the exotic: fried bugs, fried tentacles, etc... I ended up going for a more "normal" dinner, and ended up eating bbqed lamb, bbqed beef, shao bing (kinda like fried pita bread), sweet congee soup, and other amazing food.

Routine for the next several days was the same: staying at home for part of the day, then going out later on.
The first day I went out with my cousin, and we ended up watching the new Transformers movie, the original English version :). I thought the plot and action were pretty good, though it was definitely rushed at parts. I've got high expectations for the next one though! Next, we headed to the arcade again. This time, I ended up playing Tekken and did quite well (I picked Lei Wulong for those of you who are curious). After I placed my one token in, this guy came over and we started fighting each other. I won the first battle (which are a best out of three) easily, as he barely landed any hits. Since he lost, he put in another token and we fought again. This time, he picked Devil Jin and kept using a cheap move that was hard to block. I lost the first battle, but ended up winning the second one. In the third and final battle, my character was brought down to near death (any one hit would've KO-ed him), while my opponent had over half his health left. Somehow, I managed to use a large succession of combos and was able to take him out :). Since he left, I ended up playing the computer and won three series of battles, before I ended up losing. (All this was on one token ^^, Note: I also managed to hit the jackpot in this wheel of fortune-esque game that dispenses tickets) Afterwards, we went out to eat some sushi at this restaurant near the mall. I ended up eating 10+ kinds of sushi, as well as a bowl of seafood ramen. The sushi was pretty good and not too expensive, after converting back to US currency haha.

The next day, I ended up going out shopping and bought lots of various goods, including shirts, ties, etc. For dinner, we went to an amazing Korean BBQ restaurant. The place had optional tradition seating, where you were required to take off your shoes, and also, all the waiteres/ waitresses wore traditional clothing. We ended up getting two plates of pork, one plate of fish, one plate of lamb, one plate of beef, one plate of potatoes/ sweet potatoes, and some vegetables. I really enjoyed personally cooking the meat, as well as the custom sesame sauce they provided.

After a couple of days, we went to one of the largest amusement parks in Zhengzhou (I don't think it was that big, as there were only 14 rides total?- it had a tourist rating of AAAA, whereas the max is AAAAA). The rides at the park were fairly repetitive, as the majority of them involving spinning in a circle, or flipping upside down. I seriously doubted the safety of the rides, as the cushions were rock hard...think binders being hit on your upper torso/ head as you are being flipped upside down and turned in circles. Afterwards, we headed to an Italian restaurant, which was actually full of "outsiders," mostly Indians?. For dinner, we ended up getting a sausage and green pepper pizza, chicken and egg soup (that's not Italian.. haha), pasta and...beef?, as well as a Hawaiian pizza (which was made of pineapple...and shrimp?) The pizza wasn't too bad, as the cheese was quite authentic, though there was hardly any tomato sauce. Everything tasted pretty good, though the shrimp was quite unexpected...they didn't really have much taste either.

Near the end of our trip, we decided to spend a day at a health spa, which was part of a four-star hotel. Basically, you could stay for 24 hours (with three meals included) for only 100ish Yuan (16ish dollars?). The spa facilities were amazing as there were so many different aspects. The shower room was quite extravagant too, as there were massage style showers and other aspects. On the first floor, there was a huge pool that had numerous water massagers built into the sides, as well as lounge chairs, and semi-hot tubs. We spent a couple of hours there relaxing away and enjoying the complimentary water, tea, and juice. In addition, there was an upper portion where people could lie on "hot slabs" and sleep if they wanted. Furthermore, there was a set of "natural" hot tubs, some of which were filled with various herbs. Finally, there was a fairly large pool filled with small fishes that would "nibble" / clean dirt off your body if you stayed still. When lunchtime came, we changed into bathrobes provided by the spa (they were white and red striped...reminding me of prison hahahaha). Lunch was a buffet, filled with various Chinese dishes, as well as soup, rice, and noodles (and great dessert!). After lunch, we headed upstairs to a floor filled with massage chairs that each had LCD TVs attached and ended up sleeping for a bit. (There were also personal massage rooms and a VIP section) Next, I ended up surfing the web at a mini "internet cafe," though the internet/ computers there were horrible...so I left after a couple of minutes (think IE version 6, Windows XP PRO chinese version, <256 MB RAM, and laggy internet). Instead, I ended up going back to the first floor and relaxing in the hot tub for a while longer. Afterwards, we went back and began packing for Beijing!