MONDAY!   Okay, here we GO!   We’re no longer in Shanghai, we’ve moved on and the Riding4Beer 2011 China Tour is underway!  Yesterday afternoon, after pushing and shoving our way through the railway station (along with 100,000 of our closest Chinese friends), we finally made it onto the train to Nanjing.  After a few hundred kilometers (pretty cool talk, huh!) we emerged into COMPLETE and TOTAL CHAOS!  It’s the beginning of the three day Dragon Festival here in China.

So here’s the deal on the Festival.   It’s a national holiday, nobody knows why it started or what it means, and everybody (and we mean all 1.5 billion Chinese) are in the street outside of our new hostel in Nanjing screaming, chanting and honking horns.  Oh yeah, and there’s lots of drinking, so really it just like being back home at the trailer park.  The hostel we found is literally upstairs over a pawn shop (NOT KIDDING!), but for $6 bucks a night what do you expect, clean sheets? (They’re not).

Anyway, besides the fact that we are only here for a few days (unless we’re detained for questioning by the authorities), there are some major advantages to the place we’re staying.  For instance, in our bathroom there’s a condom machine mounted right on the wall (NOT KIDDING AGAIN!).  Folks, you talk about convenience – you just don’t find that kind of sh-t in the rooms at Motel 6!  Look, we could go on and on, but we’re having so much fun filling the rubbers up with water and dropping them out our window on the crowds walking by….. you get the picture, right?

                                SIX PICS TODAY ! - UPLOADED ON THE SLOWEST INTERNET IN THE WORLD!

     
       All these people got on our train to Nanjing!                             This is SOOOO damn convenient!

    
         Yup!  This is home above the pawnshop!                      Stacy dropping water filled "rubber" ballons!

    
This is the sign in the lower left of the picture above!          Laundry day in our "multi-purpose" bathroom!