WARNING NUMBER TWO- This post includes one rather DISTURBING part. I like to try to keep a PG rated blog, but one section near the end goes all the way up to R. Normally, I'd omit it, but it was just really rough for me to experience and since this blog is about my adventures, some bad ones need to make the cut as well. I'll mark the section so that if you are fainthearted you can just skip it. I DON'T WANT TO DISCOURAGE PEOPLE FROM READING THIS, BUT FOR YOUNGER PEOPLE OR PEOPLE WHO ARE UNABLE TO HANDLE GRAPHIC THEMES OR SITUATIONS DO NOT READ ANYTHING PAST THE STOP SIGN.So, today was the day that we go to Shanghai World Expo. We left Suzhou in the morning and arrived in Shanghai in the early afternoon and checked into our hotel. The bus ride there was rather long but that was fine; I was just excited to go there. However, en route, Campbell realized that he left his pass port at the hotel back in Suzhou which caused slight panic and much joking shortly thereafter. He's a really easygoing guy so he just went with it (the loss and the jokes) as he was assured by Tony that the hotel in Suzhou would mail it to Shanghai.Shanghai is VERY different from Suzhou. In Suzhou, save for the shopping area, few people walked around at shopping places at night, but Shanghai was just a mess of people. Trying to get onto the subway was roughly equivalent to a salmon trying to spawn upstream with people rudely bumping into you and jostling you around. Not fun.
But, I didn't let that get me around. The World Expo/Fair has been around for a long time and has given us the Ferris Wheel and the Eiffel tower. I was sort of excited to go there just to see what new things would be there.
So we got there and it was probably 50 square miles of just pavilions. Which was cool. Excited, we all hopped in line for the City of the Future pavilion. As I stood in line I was wondering what would be inside. What new technology could those four walls hold?
And after a half hour, I walked in to find that the building had suggestions for cities of the future such as having cities in the ocean and in space. However, other than having vague concepts, it really didn't seem to have any real technology or thought process as to how these concepts would be engineered. Disappointed, I hoped that the country pavilions would be better.
Since we had people from the Netherlands, Turkey, the US and Korea, we were hoping that we'd be able to hit up each of those four before we left. Unfortunately, the building were quite spread out.
We hit up the Netherlands first and there was quite a line. But, since Nadia is Dutch, she walked over to the people working it and asked if she could get in. The workers saw that she was Dutch and let us all in. Totally cool.
The exhibit was...lackluster though. It had a lot of plastic sheep and some random stuff involving the Netherlands. Honestly, it reminded me of an exhibit from Epcot except for less stuff to do and no rides.
Likewise, we were able to get into Turkey's exhibit just fine (we had two girls from Turkey, both named Irem) and walked around. It fared about the same on my own personal scale. It was like a mini museum. I was annoyed that they mentioned NOTHING about Byzantine and Constantinople, but I guess history is written by the winners and some things get left out. Whatever.
So, next, we tried the US exhibit, which looked huge and had an hour and a half line. I walked up to the people working the exhibit with Jim and Campbell and we asked to get in. The workers were all Asian and didn't really understand what we were talking about. One of the workers responded to us in Chinese while the others looked confused, not understanding what we had asked. The three of us blinked. What was this? We quickly realized that no actual Americans were working the American booth. Typical US. Typical. So after denouncing our country loudly (apparently to no one that would understand) the group of us decided to head for Korea.
And surprise, Korea let us in ahead of the lines. We went in and watched some kind of movie (that was in CHINESE!!!!! WTF?) which was alright, but more of a kiddy thing than anything else. Not even the Koreans seemed thrilled with it. But, at least they let us in!
Stupid America.
Anyways, we had been walking around for most of the day in beating hot sun and it was getting closer to 9PM. All of us were tired, a little cranky and just blah. It was somewhat of a lost day as it was clearly not what any of us were looking for. If I wanted to do Epcot, I could have gone to Orlando, FL and saved myself a whole headache.
Perhaps I had high expectations, but I was left disappointed by the whole ordeal and overall in China. But, I want to keep an open mind still. No use shutting myself off to it so quickly.
WARNING- HERE BEGINS THE ROUGHER PART. STOP READING IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO READ GRAPHIC STUFF. DO NOT SAY I DID NOT WARN YOU!So after we got back to the hotel, Tony mentioned that there was a massage parlor in the basement. Being exhausted and thinking that it would be decent for my weary body, I opted for it as did Jihoon, Miranda, Albert, Nadia and Mike. We went downstairs and waited for about thirty minutes or so (after which I was questioning if I could stand up- HA HA. Ahem). Normally, I wouldn't be game for a massage, but it was only Y150 ($21) here, so why not try it out?
I met my woman, though I didn't see a name tag. She was younger, probably twenties and seemed to be nice, though she did not speak much English. She led me to my private room as everyone else sorta branched off. She gave me a shirt that looked like vaguely floral print (like a Hawaiian shirt) and some boxer type underwear made out of the same material as scrubs for me to wear during the massage. She left the room and I took off my shirt and pants. I slipped on the new shirt, somewhat confused as to why she had given me a shirt, and put the scrubs underwear over the boxers I was wearing.
When she came back, she looked confused that I had put the scrubs underwear on over the boxers, but I shook my head saying this was the way it was going to be. I'm not laying on some massage table wearing only those scrubs things. Heck no.
So, she has me lay face down on the table and massaged my back and my legs. Then she massaged my butt, which was...interesting to say the least. I had never had that done before and it tickled. Strange as it sounds, it was the truth.
She then had me flip over and started to massage my arms, which also felt nice and then she started to touch my chest. It didn't feel like she was trying to massage it- rather her hands were brushing over certain erogenous zones. It felt...weird and kind of strange that she was doing that, but hey she was doing her job, right? I shouldn't question her. Right?
She asked me if I was an American (Meiguo- I recognized that word), to which I agreed and she counted on her fingers to twenty three and pointed to herself and indicated that was her age. She then pointed to me. Why not be friendly, right? I indicated that I was 21. She nodded and smiled kindly. Why not massage and talk at the same time? Customer service, right?
Then she started to massage my legs. She worked her way up my inner thigh which also felt very weird and made me a bit uncomfortable but due to my just being tired and thinking that this was part of her job, I just went with it.
Finally she pointed to my crotch gave a pumping gesture and said "Massage?"
Not entirely sure I had heard what I did, I leaned up and she repeated, brushing her hand across the area and putting a finger up to her pursed lips. Her intentions were clear. No one would know.
"Y200" she said ($28). I shook my head. No. I didn't want that.
I leaned back as I was really just tired at this point and she took one of my hands and held it just below her chest. She smiled enticingly and asked "No money?"
My voice was kinda raw but I groaned out "No want."
She walked down towards my legs and pointed once more at the area in question. "Massage."
"No want. No want."
Praying to God that she didn't try to do anything and immobile from exhaustion, I just leaned back, ready to try to roll my way to freedom if it got stranger.
Thankfully she respected me and massaged my face and shoulders for the remaining time.
At the end of the time, she looked down at her cell phone and typed in "Y20" (less than $3) and showed me it, giving a sad sort of smile. I hadn't thought it was possible to fear and feel sorry for someone at the same time. However, this was exactly the case. She had really scared me out of my wits (here I was thinking the "happy ending" was an urban legend) but at the same time, I had to wonder how bad her life must be in order for her to haggle herself down to less than $3 for certain deeds. Shaking my head no, she exited, the room, I changed back into my street clothes and waited for the others to get out of their rooms.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one who got the same offer. Mike also was offered the same deal (though she didn't go down to Y20 in the end) which made me feel slightly better though at this point I was so mentally and physically at my limit that I thought I was going to fall apart (literally or figuratively) in the elevator with Miranda and all of them.
I went to my bed very uneasy that night, thoughts of Sunny (my name for her) in my head. Just, it was so strange to both feel the utmost pity for someone while they honestly scare you out of your wits. I pray for her. God help her.
-Reven
Oh good lord. It wasn't in Korea that we had to worry about you, noooo it was in China! That had to be incredibly awkward and I'm sure you've officially been scarred for life.
ReplyDelete