10-21
This day I had an incredible adventure to the Pearl Market with Syvlia from Canada and Swiss Lady.  The Pearl Market is a famous building with lots of merchants who are known for their aggressive tactics.  A lot of people complain that it is overwhelming and that the merchants become tirelessly annoying and incredibly "grabby".  I had a blast.  I thought it was hilarious and fun.  Of course I didn't intend to buy anything, which looked rather painful.  Merchants usually asked 3 to 4 times the price the lowest price they would let something go for, which meant you had to engage in an intense combat of bargaining.  I think, from the perspective of the sellers, that this would become exhausting.  In a way, the act of bargaining might be the tourist attraction to the place.  I was more interested in throwing the merchants a curveball.  I was only interested in wallets made from prehistoric materials, 20 sided dice, and statues of the Monkey King that are "badass".  Sylvia bought a memory stick for like 5 dollars that never worked.  We also saw knock off ipads that were running Android.

After a few hours of shopping we got brave and ventured down a very medievel looking alleyway for some food.  There didn't seem to be many people around.  None of the places looked to inviting.  I saw one and kinda peaked in, through the vinyl plastic curtains that everyone uses--it was quite dingy inside.  I half expected to see someone hammering out some claymores or broadswords, but instead found a guy who was baking bread on large round press.  We sat down and looked at the table of older Chinese gentlemen next to us;  they were eating sandwiches--Chinese paninis--and soup.  We gestured that we would have what they were having--no problem.  It was an incredible sandwich and a satisfying quest.  The hot sauce was fabulous too, despite being exposed from large cans that probably had a prior purpose.  One of the older gentlemen, whom we had made friends with through our waves and thumbs up gestures, wrote a note and gave it to Sylvia.  It was all in Chinese except for a string of numbers, which we deduced was some street address;  she was flattered, assuming that was his intention.

Sylvia and I went to the temple of heaven afterwards (the swiss girl had errands to do).  It was right next to the Pearl market.  It was cool.  It was a temple.  Whatever--I've seen a lot.  We ate some apples on the street--crab apples I think, but we started calling them sex apples, because thats what they tasted like.  It was a long day, but a lot of fun.  We capped it off by returning to the Phone book restaraunt.  I got the same soup, but the others didn't like it.  I believe the word "Barn" was the most frequent adjective used to describe it.