I was walking round Taikang Lu the other day and came across this shop called Shinzi Katoh. I spent a good half an hour looking round giggling at bags and posters saying random things like “I AM PAINTING ON THE GIRAFFE” or “THE ELEPHANT HAS A LONG NOSE. HE KISSES THE LITTLE APPLE ON THE HEAD!”.
It all took me back to my childhood, reading THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR, I ended up picking up a few postcards which will no doubt sit at the bottom of a drawer for 10 years:
Where do I start on this:
A – it’s a restaurant, not a hotel
B – it’s tacky to the extreme
C – can you patent interior design? It would have to be pretty special and unique (it was neither)
D – all the elements of the restaurant (including the poorly reproduced sistine chapel ceiling and moulded grandfather clocks) are copied from something else.
E – I forgot to take any pictures inside the restaurant to support D
F – This is pretty poor isn’t it, there must be something better to post about
G – Did I mention that I once met Lionel Ritchie’s ex personal shopper?
H – Oh, and once I waved to Prince Charles (along with the rest of my school) as he drove down the A34 (at speed), presumably the witches nuns thought he slowed down every time he passed a crowd of primary school children waving union jacks.
So I arrived in Bangkok last night to give a seminar today, nothing too exciting to report so far, here’s some rambled garbage:
Bit of good old Chinglish at the airport, apparently the Chinese says “Various Snacks”
Hotel staff wearing 1950′s UFOs / World War 1 German helmets
Actually, I know how this is going to pan out, the strange object (the hat) was revealed very early into the plot, later during my stay the hat will develop into a key plot element, perhaps a door will be revealed to which the hat is the key, or invading aliens will be repelled by lasers shooting out of the top, or maybe I’ll knock it off when I’m drunk and throw it like a frisbee into the hotel gardens (before being pummelled to a pulp by his burly colleagues).
Draconian Bar Rules
The fact that they need a sign to remind you not to bring weapons into the bar tells me everything I need to know about Bangkok. Presumably in other bars it would be perfectly acceptable to wander in armed to the teeth, I need to find these bars, the one above was somewhat sterile..
I just bought two dozen boxes of these from my corner shop, I’m going to take them all in one go and see what happens.
update: translation -
American Big Soldier, helps to erect/enlarge
you can see the effectiveness in ten minutes / the long gun will never fall down / extremely powerful
Malignant boy coming soon!!
Any westerner who has just arrived in Shanghai will know that it’s virtually impossible to find a knife and fork in local restaurants, so why is it that Chinese airlines never carry chopsticks for both domestic and international flights, they always hand out plastic knives and forks?
Anyway, I almost forgot about chopsticks completely when I saw this in front of me in a queue at the airport
“Call to arms for all chunkily penised bous to do her right and do her good”
They should have scrapped the rest of the nonsense and just gone with that, in HUGE RED CAPITAL LETTERS
EDIT : What do you call Chinglish from Korea?
If you ever think about making a trip to Wenzhou forget about it the rules in the hotels are nothing short of draconian!
Hmm, I really need to figure out how to upload images properly…. In the meantime, click on the image to see it larger
