Raising the Bar, and Kiss My Mango.

I started my day around 3.00 today and it was glorious! Last night Heather and I met up with a couple guests at the hotel bar next to us in Furama. The bar itself called Susie Wong's, and its basically the opposite of a bar you would expect a 5 star hotel to have. It was already set up for a "club atmosphere" with thumping music and laser lights shooting everywhere, not to mention the waiters bobbed their heads along to the rocking jams...I understand what they're going for, but it just felt silly going in when all we wanted were a couple beers and conversation. The worst way to meet someone is taking them into a loud bar where only a few sentences can be exchanged and the meanings are usually lost.
 We decided to move our tiny party to JD's, the local ex pat watering hole/ dance club. I like JD's because of the music, the atmosphere of the people I'm with, and its amazing bathrooms. (Yeah that last part is a blatant lie. They're awful.) But its a great place to blow of steam, and act like great dancers!
My favorite part is when our group "gets up the courage" and goes to the stage to dance. We grab people to join us, and generally just rock out. Hey, we can't help it that we are such amazing dancers! I met up with a few of the girls I met earlier, and we had our own dance party- so much fun! We danced the night away til the wee hours, and made our way back home. JD's is an experience all in itself, and I should really take pictures...but I'm afraid it just won't do it any  justice. The atmosphere is intangible, and the experience is always interesting.
We tried our very own Shangri-La hotel bar, called F2 one night as well. It's a rather uncomfortable juxtaposition of styles, music eras, seating and overall design. We walked in at 8.30pm, and they gave us sparkling wine as part of a special, then BAM the bar turned into a night club complete with yet again, laser lights and blasting music. The effect was off putting, and the four of us girls had a hard time talking or hearing one another. Tricia spotted a guest across the bar, and they met up to chat for a bit then he came over with some work friends to talk. We got a booth, tried to talk over the noise, but generally had fun swapping stories. We met Leo, a work friend of our guests who apparently graduated from IU! What a small world! And the guest himself was the very same guest who got an intern from last year, a job in Bali. A small, small world!

Today Heather, Kamal and I went to an Indian restaurant, ordered some very tasty dishes, had great conversation. Next we decided to have an adventure shopping at Victory Plaza, or as Kamal kept saying, "Victoria's Plaza". Our poor taxi driver. Our first two minutes of being there was just the tip of the iceberg of things to ensue. Heather picked up a couple stuff pandas, exclaiming how cute they were. If you pulled them apart a string attached to each one sets off a voice box that says,"I love you" with a kissy noise. She put it back and we started walking away. THEN all of the sudden, this very angry voice behind us started yelling in Chinese. A man came up to us holding the panda bears that were supposedly broken by Heather. He fired away in Chinese, to pay for them, and wouldn't take no for an answer. My guess is he pulled it apart after we walked away and then accused us of breaking it to get money, and that just got my blood boiling. I was fuming as Heather and Kamal stood there trying to diffuse the situation, Kamal offering to pay while Heather kinda laughed about it. I kept trying to just walk away but he would not take no for an answer. Best part, he wanted 65 RMB for the crappy toys! After making a huge scene, and creating a big fuss he finally just took the 25RMB and practically threw the pandas at us. At this point I would've gladly reciprocated the gesture, but Heather and Kamal just walked away. I don't think I could live here simply because of the shopping experience. I feel like so much of it is a rip off, or the tension is too much to take. I just want to pay a reasonable price, for a good quality product. The shop owners act like you're stealing their first born if you don't buy something!
Not my idea of a good time.
We wandered around the underground mall looking at shoes for Heather. If I don't find what I want within about a half hour of shopping, I usually give up, so we went on a hunt for something sweet. We found a mall with a Starbucks, Hagen Daas, DQ and this place called KissMango. Cute, right? Sounds like a great place for a smoothie, and somewhere to relax. Wanting to be adventurous, and not have something we know, we chose KissMango. We ordered by pointing at pictures, of course, because that never steers us wrong. They delivered these items, in this order: first a lemon juice drink, because they were out of orange juice (off to a good start!) two green pillowy dessert thingys, that smelled frankly like someone's unwashed behind, three orange squishy balls with coconut on the outside and mango in the middle, a regular mango smoothie and their "thin" smoothie. (I think it was supposed to be green tea with red beans...Don't ask me about the translation from that to thin.) I tried the orange thingys first. The texture was chewy and it tasted ok, but then we tried the green pillowy things, however, the smell was too repulsive to enjoy the whipped cream like interior. My drink was supposed to be more like an icee, but it definitely had milk in it, and the lemon drink was...well just lemon water and how great can that be? I think Heather was the only one who liked her order. We decided that KissMango could Kiss our Mangoes, and shouted audios to the place and went to good ol' iCafe for a nice, safe dinner.

This blog post was of enormous proportions, and I apologize!