Super Power Democracy of China - Part 12 - Day 8 PM

After the Lake Park walk - we trekked up to the foot of the Purple Mountain (aka Purple Gold Mountain aka Zijin Shan) which apparently - got its name from its purple coloured rocks. We caught the somewhat shonky looking chairlift to the top summit. However - we managed to survive the ordeal.

At the top was pretty much nothing apart from a rip off kiosk complete with stale corn, a monk thingy (which we passed on because it was going to set us back $2AUD) and a lot of out of control yooths (I pronunce "youths" as yooths) attempting to do Chinese Idol at the top. There was also a crazy middle aged woman who was doing some J-Lo arse shaking dancing at the top too... Maybe it was a sexy form of tai-chi?

We had a crazy idea that you could perhaps catch the chairlift to the top and walk down to the bottom whilst visiting a couple of mausoleum and temples and stuff - but we were dead wrong. Purple Mountain was huge and it would have taken us 8 weeks to walk everywhere there. So we caught the shonky chairlift back down to the summit. My favourite bit of chinglish on the lift was "Bus stop of the Astronomical Observatory is ahead."

As Ant was feeling somewhat unwell (due to a bakery breakfast) and it was getting late in the day - we decided to walk away from the direction back to town... It was quite a scenic walk (lots of bamboo and quaint bridges and enough wooden walkways to bring down the Amazon Rainforest) - but Ant was continuing to feel worse and worse. Plus we were losing daylight.

After about 45 mins of walking - we decided to call it quits and try and hail down a taxi. But unfortunately - all of the taxis going past us were all taken. The only sure fire way to hail a taxi was for us to walk the 45 mins back to the foot of the chair lift.

We arrived to the chair lift as soon as someone was getting out of a cab - and we grabbed it. To our horror (or surprise) - a 15 min taxi ride from the chair lift to downtown Nanjing only cost around $2AUD. To think we were walking around like idiots the day before when we could live like rich beeatches and drive around in taxis instead....!

As Ant was sick - and I needed to catch up on some blogging (I was only doing Shanghai by this stage) - Ant stayed at the hotel and I went (directly) to the sleasy internet cafe.

On the way home - I was feeling a little peckish. Why not keep my downwards spiral of delicacies going and have a Mc Donald's Sundae on the way home. To conceal my shame - I ate the Sundae in the McDonald's below our hotel in the restaurant - so that Ant wouldn't know. But I fessed up 10 minutes later to Ant... The shame...

Keeping with the theme of downwards spirals of food - we headed back to Deji Plaza in an attempt to eat what was denied the night before - pizza slut!

I'm not sure if this is a Chinese thing - but they always sit Westerners at the front of restaurants. This happened at Taco Bell Grande and this also was the case at Pizza Slut. But you feel like a total retard sitting out the front for everyone to stare at you - especially at Pizza Slut.

It costs about 170 RMB (almost $30AUD) for 2 pizzas, some sort of asian-fusion garlic bread-esque bread and three beers (about the beers - I was getting depressed that we couldn't find any alcoholic drinks on the menu - "I did not want to go to Pizza Hut sober" - but alas - we weren't looking at the right menu).

The service was a little crazy - they seemed to keep bringing pizzas to our table even though we didn't order (keep those fat westerners fat dammit). Also - they seemed to have a migrane when I ordered a second beer. The two girls servicing us would bicker all the time at each other - maybe it was something to do with the "Customer Mania" badges they were wearing.

After the shame of Pizza Slut - we decided that we needed another American Capitalist Scum experience - so we headed for Wal-Mart. Neither Ant or I have ever been to a Wal-Mart before - so where better than Nanjing, China?!

Wal-Mart is basically a Woolworths with a Big-W attached (Big-W eerirely looks like Wal-Mart - scary). So it is full of lots of cheap crap that is 10 Jiao (aka 1/60th of one Australian Dollar) cheaper than elsewhere. I might have gone a little crazy at the "legit" CD and DVD section - where you could buy stuff for about $5 each. I even picked up a copy of a Song Tribute to Chairman Mao DVD - which should be gold with songs of praise for Chairman Mao. I just hope it has engrish subtitles... I think it cost me $2AUD. Sweeeet.