From Packing To Peking Duck

Well we woke up this morning to our last day at the "Compound" and the weather was as hot as ever. I must say I'm looking forward to going to Shanghai as it is a coastal city and should offer some type of relief from the humidity, you know ocean breezes, marine layers and maybe even coastal fog and mist. I know we are not supposed to pray in this communist country but to hell with that I'm praying. Okay maybe praying is a little bit of a stretch for me but I am wishing upon a star really really hard. We began to organize our clothes in preparation to pack, along with our recently found Chinese treasures. That is when we found out just how little space we really had in our luggage. At this point we were definitely contemplating what we were willing to throw away in order make room for the extras that we just couldn't live without. The first round of eliminations took place without too much of a second thought. I won't even miss those dress shoes either. Hopefully there is a Chinese maid with a mans size eleven foot. We also were able to condense mine and Joanie's dirty clothes down to one suitcase thanks to Joanie's unmatched burrito rolling skills, to use the phase that Dennis Crow came up with. That's right burrito rolling skills, but in this place and time I think she was in the spirit of things and was actually rolling "Egg Rolls". Everything was now as snug as a bug in a rug and we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring our Asian Sauna even more and revisiting the little local store to buy more junk food that has became a staple to our filling diet that we were all gorging ourselves with. . .NOT!

After our afternoon ventures it was another round of showers for all and an evening of getting dressed up to enjoy our farewell dinner which consisted of a Peking Duck dinner. I opted out for a evening stroll and a cigar, as I an not a huge fan of the little greasy fowl. From the conversations that had with many of the Duckie Diners they had fun but they did say that I hadn't missed much. We all looked forward to our upcoming change of venue to Shanghai and the ensuing "Sleeper Train" adventure. This was a first for everyone that I talked to and if it was anything like our adventure up until now it was bound to be some seriously funny shit. So until tomorrow stay tuned for the funny shit to continue.