john & i went to Beijing for a four day weekend to visit with our friend mark, who was visiting from london. ohhhhhh Beijing how i love you! we stayed at the OPPOSITE HOUSE for our first two nights and it was straight up the most professionally managed most amaaaaazing hotel ever. we had a food orgy at BEI and the food was so delicious, and we danced around all night at with one of my favourite lomangs ever. also, drinks at apocathecary and dinner at middle 8 rounded out a perfect two days in my former adopted city. also, bonus! british airways lost mark’s luggage, and thanks to him being insured up the wazoo, he ended up with 1000 pounds cash to spend on clothing. he went buck wild for two days at prada and luis vuitton, and at zero hour when we were supposed to be leaving, he realized he still had 6000rmb to spend. lucky for john and i, mark deems anything non-luxury brand to be beneath him, and so we went to american apparel (the closest shop to the hotel since we were running out of time) and did a grab and go shopping trip in under 20 minutes. not surprisingly though, AA is ridiculously overpriced in china, 6k really only got us one bag of cheaply made little ditties.
after the opposite house, we made our way to the Kempinski managed Commune on the Wall, which was beautiful but employed the most useless, hapless collection of staff who were completely unable to handle even the simplest of requests. hey Kempinski, you’re going to be getting an email from us very soon, 5 star hotel my ass.
back in shanghai now, and it’s very very nearly christmas. happy holidays, everyone! xx
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