Expo in Mid-Autumn

Last Wednesday was mid-Autumn festival, or Moon Cake Day!  We all had a day off school and a single day of holiday mid-week.  The Chinese do it a bit differently though, and have Wednesday off school and work too, but to make it a decent break agree to have Thursday and Friday as holidays too, and then work on the next Saturday and Sunday.  So basically, yesterday was a working day that we weren't working!  So knowing that we had 3 more visits to Expo on our 7 day pass, and that Expo is over at the end of October, we thought 'let's go today' - short notice, little preparation - excellent!!

On Wednesday (the holiday) Expo attendance had been a record high of 631,200 people!  But yesterday we were there with only 353,800 people.  The weather was perfect... we have passed our hot and sticky summer and enjoyed a comfortable day in the early 20s.  And this morning, we have woken up to pouring rain... so feel super smart!!

I packed a quick lunch, while Mike patched a puncture in the pram wheel and then grabbed other supplies for the day, and headed down to the gate, and luck was on our side, there was an Expo Taxi waiting!!  In we jumped!!

Arriving at Expo, we could sense it was going to be a nice calm day.

We then decided we were hungry, and discussed what we wanted to eat... we agreed on Mexican, but from standing here looking at the China Pavillion, the Mexico Pavillion was seriously the furthest possible pavillion away, and still on the Pudong side!  So we headed in that general direction with the intention of visiting anything we could along the way... 

First pavillion for the day was New Zealand.  We both feel a bit like honorary Kiwis at times as we both work them closely, and have loads of Kiwi neighbours here!  The queue was moving very freely, and while we were queuing, we were fortunate to be there while the Haka was performed.  Jie Jie was very taken with their tongues!  Inside the pavillion was like a tour through the cities by going through private homes and businesses, and then into the stunning countryside of NZ. 

Next we were walking past Thailand, and they had our first 'Easy Access' queue of the day... we went straight down, and bypassed most of the queue.  Aaah, the benefit of having a pram, and carrying a baby!!  We were very excited because we actually will be in Thailand this time next week!!  So thought it was a good opportunity to have a look.  Their pavillion was 3 rooms, which you were moved through methodically, because there was a film in each.  The first one was great, all pictures of the cities and the beaches (Hello Koh Samui!) and then history, and finally another tour of the country, but IN 3D!!!!  Jie Jie was so cute, and jumped about a metre when a shark suddenly swam out of the screen.  The last line, was 'Come and visit soon' - we said 'Oh, OK'.

After that we knew we had to eat, but we were still so far from Mexico... so we went to the Belgian Beer Cafe, and had a Hoegaarten and hot chips with mayonnaise.  Didi fell asleep on the way.  Jie Jie loved the hot chips so much that she said she wanted more... by this stage the queue was really long, so I gave her some money and she managed to walk right to the front of the line, hand over her money (the counter is about 6 foot high), and then be given her cone of hot chips... she had quite a crowd of admirers, and nobody seemed to object with her version of queuing.

While Didi was still asleep we went and had another look at the beautiful Little Mermaid from Denmark,  her pool is so tranquil, and Jie Jie really did love seeing her.  Then through Slovenia, which had a book theme, and softly coloured illuminated walls which changed colour gently... oh, and a 'Terracotta Warrior' of Novak Djokovich (the tennis player).

Finally we got to Mexico... another nice quick entrance opened up again because of our pram... first room had a 5 min movie showing clips around Mexico, then directed through an interesting display of art, relics and an enormous altar with a Virgin Mary in the middle.  We went to the restaurant, but not starving any more so had some corn chips with guacamole and Mike and I had a beef and tequila (what else) taco each.  We paid, got our change, left the restaurant and getting ready to leave the pavillion, when the waitress came back to us and asked us to swap the 100RMB note we had 'used' to pay for our snack... I asked why, and she showed me that the note was missing a corner.  I asked her how she knew it was ours, and why they hadn't picked it up immediately, and she assured me it was ours.  I told her she couldn't prove it was ours and it was her problem, Mike was quickly checking all his other notes to check that he didn't actually have a 'bad batch', and said sorry, there was no way we were swapping their bad note with one of our good ones.  We hadn't noticed it had a corner missing, so we hadn't tried to be deceitful, and we seriously had no proof that they hadn't swapped it anyway.  Some people I know, say Mexicans are dodgy.... maybe it's true!

After Mexico we went through the South American Countries pavillion, and visited mini-pavillions of Uruguay, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay, Dominican Republic and probably a couple more.  There were stages everywhere in this big pavillion, and each time Jie Jie and Didi jumped up and started entertaining.  It really was funny, and always attracted a big crowd!  After all the dancing and performing, Jie Jie finally fell asleep in the pram!!

Second time round for me at the Australia Pavillion, and it was better than I remembered.  We completely skipped the queue, and went to the passport holders line, and in front of us were a bunch of 'Chinese' people showing Australian passports, and trying to get their extended families in, the guy supervising allowed the 6 people with passports in, but not the rest.  Then he looked at us asked where we were from, we responded, and they just waved us in, apparently didn't want or need ID, lucky as we didn't have passports with us, but I was ready to show my NSW Drivers License.  I think I wasn't very impressed the first time I was there, because it was my very first pavillion ever, and I didn't know what to expect.  This time, I was impressed with the show, and the display on the way up (I still thought the sculptures were ugly, but maybe that's just personal opinion).  There was an old guy working there, and I asked him if he knew the result of the Pies and Saints Grand Final... he said it was a draw and they were replaying it next weekend.  I said to him that he must be having me on!!  Then another staff member said the same thing... and I still didn't believe it so had to text Dad to check.

We didn't realise quite how long she was going to sleep for but we visited Finland, Greece, Norway and Australia, managed to leave Expo and catch a taxi all while she did.  We had a great day, and still have so much more to see!!!  Will we get there again?

Family Structure

One of the interesting things we experienced on our trip was when Jie Jie decided she 'needed' a family of yaks to take home.  In Shangri-La, yaks were the predominant farming animal, and indeed frequent supplier on menus - yak steak and yak yoghurt... boy, I wish we could get the yak yoghurt here - so delicious!!

Anyway, in all the souvenir shops there were these ornamental, well they weren't toys, yaks in varying sizes.  Jie Jie was insistent that she needed a yak, and after buying the first yak continued to wheedle and whine telling us she needed a whole family.  So we went forth and bought the rest of the family, in our case, 2 parent yaks and one baby brother yak, having already purchased the big sister yak.

But, have we lived in China too long?  The family apparently wasn't finished, because she also needed an ayi yak!  We opted not to buy an ayi yak as we ended up convincing her that she only needed a yak family for those who were there on holiday now and who slept at our house every day!

Back home however, she happens to have five 'Little Ponies' and subsequently I have heard her turning those into a Pony Family, complete with ayi pony!