Look! Gumby! Oh, jk, it's Haibao.

At last, The World Expo. What a sight. I only had about 8 hours here, which after walking around in the absurdly humid, hot, rainy weather, was plenty of time. After about an hour of security checks and waiting to get in, we realized that we were 2/12 non-asian people there. That's right, the whole day I counted exactly 10 other non-asians. Anyway, we managed to see almost every country's pavilion, except for some of the smaller African countries (no one cares about them anyway). 

Unfortunately, the lines to actually go inside the pavilions averaged at about a 3 hour wait. The more interesting ones, like South Korea, Japan, and Singapore were 6 hours. Six hours to get in a stupid building. The first time I saw this, I thought I misread the Chinese on the sign. But then I heard an old Chinese woman complain about it, and I realized I was correct. So we only were able to go into 2 pavilions, Vietnam (I have to be partial to that one), and Israel, because two Israelis saw us in the sea of Asians, and said "Hey, you're with us now," which saved us about 3 hours of waiting in line. 

The most amazing part of the Expo is by far the architecture of each country's pavilion. When I say pavilion, some of these buildings were the size of a full-size sports stadium. The sheer size of the Expo grounds is simply baffling, as well. The interiors of the Israeli and Vietnamese pavilions were also pretty cool. The Vietnamese one had tons of gorgeous traditional artwork and sculptures, while the Israeli one had a super hi-tech panoramic movie projected onto a spherical wall. I would love to include some movies of the pavilions, but the internet here can't handle it. If you're curious, I get about 14-20 KB/s down, and about 30 KB/s up. yep, it blows. 

shopping center where we bought

traditional ceylon-style(?) samosas

Israeli Pavilion

this one had one of the coolest build structures...

it was made of a type of woven wood, 

and looked like a huge bird's nest

some middle eastern country's pavilion, amazing detail

I loved the roof of the Thailand Pavilion

two massive metal pandas

of course Brazil had a big screen with soccer on it

(too bad they already lost)

I believe this was supposed to look like grass?

England's(?) Pavilion

Each strand was a seed capsule from 

every "place" on Earth ... cool idea

USA's Pavilion was of course extremely boring, 

why would Americans care about this thing anyway....

The inside closely resembled the Texas State Fair

China's Pavilion

Clearly the best (and definitely biggest) pavilion,

even though you can't tell it's size from this picture

Another middle eastern country's pavilion

Reminded me of the Sydney Opera House

Artwork in the Vietnam Pavilion

The Vietnam Pavilion also had a stage, 

where I assume some kind of native band performed

I think those are instruments?

So that's the World Expo. It's a real challenge for me to convey the sheer size and grandeur of this venue. But I don't charge you to read this, so if you aren't impressed, just skip onto to my next post, The Great Wall of China. (coming soon)

p.s. this is Haibao