Tuesday, May 12th

Today we took a really long bus ride to a small town where the Giant Bike factory is. On the way, we got to experience "bubble gum girls" who wore next to nothing and sold gum and betel nuts. Megan, Meredith, and I did our presentation on the bus about Shimano and Giant Bikes. Since we didn't have time for breakfast at the hotel, they ordered from McDonald's for us...that was the strangest egg sandwich I think I've ever had. There was a hamburger bun with a strange fried egg, ketchup, and uber-sweet mayonnaise on top...yuck...

After Giant, we stopped at a traditional Chinese restaurant where they served us like 7 courses, but most of us never got full. We sampled things like goose, squid and jellyfish salad, and...dragon soup. Charlie said it was "black chicken," but we weren't falling for that. I've never seen a chicken with spines and ridges on its flesh.

We also stopped at a "sex phone" museum where Megan played a few solos and a duet with a famous sax girl.

Next stop was a local winery where the owner gave us plentiful samples and several bottles to drink.

Finally, we were on our way to the "love motel." Charlie rented the room for 3 hours, a "rest stay," and we split up into groups to find dinner and drinks to bring back to the room. Megan, Danny, Charles, and I wandered into a local mall and brought back Japanese food for dinner. The love motel had a pool, hot tub, wooden table with a massage shower above it, plenty of chairs, giant bed, and a karaoke machine. Danny, Charles, and I rocked out most of the night at karaoke.

After it was time to go back to our Hotel Flowers, a big group of us went out to a bar section of town. We stopped in a few, but since we, apparently, were not up to their dress code, we found an empty bar called Barbados, which soon became our bar of choice.