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| Wednesday, December 24, 2008 |
Chongming Island 19-20 dec Day 1  Ferry ride to the offshore island of Shanghai. Wet Land on Chongming island  Beautiful scenery. get ready for alot of couple shots. scroll quickly if u want. haha.     i am beginning to think that i have the makings of a photographer. i like this photo! *beams*  does this look like some korean drama poster? haha. please ignore the toilet sign on the left hand side though. howie's photoshop kinda died. so i cant do anything to this photo. haha. Mandarin Oranges plucking   can someone please agree with me that the guy looks like yoga lin, the taiwanese singer? haha. Fishing (or attempted to)  eugene posing with the old-school fishing rod.  the only group photo available... Circle of Death (Mandarin Oranges Version)  see what s*ports cl ub has done to me? *shakes head* haha. Sen Lin Gong Yuan (Chongming National Park)  some abandoned plane.. n we climbed all the way up to get a shot.  the guys, trying to be funny. i really think jason has the talent to act as a dead person.. hahah.  and we played bumper car! old school, i like. :)  one of the last few shots i took with my camera before it officially died-ed. cos i forgot to charge the battery the night before. haha. i played around with the camera functions, and tadaaa, i get purple trees! :) alrights. that's all folks. I am heading to Hangzhou on Christmas Day. Merry Christmas to all!~ :) |
| Shan ♥ 11:39 AM |
| Tuesday, December 23, 2008 |
Beijing Day 2 we signed up for some one day tour around beijing at only 40RMB and our first destination was  The great wall of china at the Shui Guan (Water gate)!  scaling the oh-so-tall and steep great wall.. winter is not a good time to go climb the great wall. cos by the time u reach the top, u'll be sweating inside and freezing on the outside. bleah.  very emo shot. but i like. :)  and a decent shot of us against the great wall as background. :)  and we saw snow... unfortunately for us, it was only on the ground. we played with snow though, which explains the above photo. cos it was a cheap tour.. they have to do something to make money right.. so they brought us to some jade selling place which i didnt take any photos. but i guess my advice is.. dun buy anything unless u really know jade. after that we headed to old beijing (lao beijing, some place that the emperor used to rest at when he went to offer incense to his ancestors.  this is a picture of the exterior. seriously speaking, there isnt much to see here. and we have to pay for the tix on top of our tour packages. luckily we were students so we only had to pay 25RMB for the entrance. the usual price is 45RMB.. so if you're not holding a student card, dun go in ok.. cos this is definitely a tourist attraction, cos apparently huan zhu ge ge shot their scenes here. n they charge you for posing with certain backdrops. of cos, being budget, we posed with those that did not require money! haha  hui bin lou. if u recognize this place from the huan zhu ge ge.. it was the restaurant that liu qing and liu hong opened. maybe the only thing that was worth watching was the qi gong performance.  this guy swallowed an entire metal ball on his hand and forced it out of his tummy using qi gong.. it was quite scary to watch. the last stop was stopping by and visiting the olympics structures!   here's howie and me posing in front of the water cube and bird nest stadium respectively.  Hip hip hurray for beijing olympics 2008!  i ended the day by eating bing tang hu lu. ok this was not the real thing. it was the fruits hu lu. only the last fruit was haw.. n i dun like the taste of it. haha. Day 3 and 4 in Beijing Day 3 and 4 in beijing were spent mainly on shopping! haha. i really love shopping in beijing much more than shanghai. firstly the people are generally more polite. and they always say no bargaining. which is what i like. bargaining kinda spoil my mood for shopping. ahaha. so i bought alot of things in beijing. lol. before we left for the airport, we wanted to eat peking duck. but... the place that was well-known for its duck was closed for lunch break!! rahhh.. so i didnt eat my peking duck. :( so i ended up eating...  ice-kachang! haha. n oh ya, i like my new cap. after all the ups and downs in this trip, we safely boarded the plane back to shanghai.  :) :) updates on chongming island another day! |
| Shan ♥ 11:47 AM |
| Tuesday, December 16, 2008 |
Train Ride from Shanghai to Beijing  the shanghai train station  our transport for the night.  initially we wanted to get the hard sleeping seats, but that particular train ride tix was already sold out because howie kinda miscalculated the date to purchase the tix. so we had to settle for the soft seats instead for the gruelling 11+ hours ride. this is the first down moment for me. cos i cant really sleep well on moving vehicles, so it was a loooooong night for me. :( 11+ hours later, we arrived in beijing at 7am! but welcoming us in beijing is the freezing cold temperature. i was shivering in my thick layers of winter clothes that i didnt even bother to stop and take photo of the beijing train station. haha. we boarded a bus and quickly made our way to our accomodation area where we will rest for the next three nights.  the Wang Fu Jing Youth Hostel! it's about 60RMB a night for one person n i think it's both cheap and good if u are not looking at luxury travelling.  The room houses only two beds, two couches, one table lamp and one table. there's no closet, just a few hooks on the wall. but i guess that's all the basic ammenities that one need. a common bathroom is available on each level, just like staying in hall.. haha. plus the place was reasonably warm, so it was quite comfortable during the period of my stay. for those who are on a budget constraint, you can consider this hostel. plus this hostel is quite accessible. Tian An Men Square  After settling down, we headed to the nearby tourist attraction, Tian An Men Guang Chang, which is the entrance of the the forbidden city. The Forbidden City The Forbidden City, also known as the Gu Gong, is the ancient palace where the past emperors had stayed. this place is super huge... we took a decent 3 to 4 hours to comb say 50% of the place.  tai he dian, the place where the emperors have his morning meetings (zhao chao) with his ministers and generals. this is also the place where they crown the empress and top scholar etc.. if u can see the carvings on the stone slabs, they are carvings of clouds and dragons. the emperor is carried on sedan up these stone slabs by sedan carriers who walk on the two flights of stairs beside it. this carries the meaning of the emperor is walking on clouds like a deity (teng1 yun2 jia4 wu4).  the inside of tai he dian. you prob would have seen something like this in drama serials.. haha. Guess the use of the container below...  This huge container can hold about 500 litres of water (i think) and it was used to put out fire when the palace caught fire in the past, especially when it was struck by lightning.. most of the palace look quite alike, with golden paint, wooden carvings, dragons on the pillars etc.. it's quite a nice place to take photo! i think we took like say at least 100 photos inside. haha. and we found out the best time to take photos is when the place is about the close at 3+ pm..  big and spacious and no squeezing tourists!  no random person in your photos. haha. and cos only the two of us travelled together, we had no other people to help us take photo. so we could only make do with ALOT of individual shots. but just before we left, we managed to ask someone to take a photo of us, in front of the stone lion statue.  not a very nice picture.. but we dun have much of a choice. haha.  check out the setting sun at 3.38pm! the day is extremely short in beijing. with the sun only rising at around 7+ am and setting as early as around 4+ pm.. after the forbidden city, we headed to Xi Dan to do some shopping and eat dinner. but i wasn't in the mood for shopping so i didnt buy anything at all. dinner was crappy as well cos we settled for cheap foodcourt food..  doesnt look appetizing. not good to eat too. blahhh. after dinner, we headed back to our hostel area to do some window shopping. we decided to scrimp and buy bread for breakfast the next morning. little do we know that the four bread below turns out to be the most expensive bread that i have ever ate in my life.  this picture is definitely worth posting cos these bread cost me over 400RMB. Reason being... i lost my wallet. :( another down moment of the trip. after buying the bread at this particular shop which i vowed never to return to, we left the place. 5 steps later, i realized that i lost my wallet. so we unpacked our entire backpack and coulnd't find my wallet. we combed the entire area outside the bread shop and there was no sign of it at all. so logical deduction points to the bread shop. so we went back to the bread shop and ask the shop assistants if they have seen a wallet on the floor. n they said no. there was no other customers in the shop except for us. and i paid for the bread so my wallet was last seen in front of the cashier. and 5 seconds later, i lost my wallet and it couldnt be found anymore... so my guess was that i dropped it in the bread shop and someone took it and dun want to return to me. by who? you can go make a logical guess. i shall not malign anyone. :( looking on the bright side, luckily, i never put anything important in that wallet. it's just money and the beijing mrt card. n i didnt bring all my cash out. so this only teach me to be more careful in future. sigh... ok.. that kinda sums up Day 1 in Beijing. more updates another day. |
| Shan ♥ 2:56 PM |
| Tuesday, December 09, 2008 |
Day 4 in Shanghai my main form of transportation in shanghai is the train system.  and this is how it looks like. this photo was taken at 9+pm.. usually it's about 10 times crowded during peak hours. haha. n pple here squeeze their way into the train, because the door close quickly and mercilessly on u. and this is pasted on their train doors.  "risk of PINCHING hand" OUCH. yesterday we headed to Magaroni, this Italian restaurant in People's Square. pretty cheap for a restaurant i guess.. n the food's not bad too. n best of all, they have no service charge nor GST. hahah.  howie had this fried rice wrapped in egg kinda thing. reminds me of SA pattaya rice, just that pattaya rice tasted better. lol.  i had this crab baked rice. one whole crab in it! and...  ice cream with soda! haha. it was pretty warm in the restaurant, so i ordered this. together with the main course, tomato soup and fruit were served. and guess what fruit it was for the day?  tadaaa! mandarin orange. a little mismatch with the entire italian cuisine right.. but im not complaining cos it was pretty sweeet. :) after dinner, we headed to the Bund for the beautiful shanghai night landscape.  so pretty. :) u noe sometimes u just want to admire the beautiful scenery, n not to be disturbed. but many locals asked us if we wanted to take a photo at a cost of 5RMB each. every 10 metres u walk, someone ask u.. it was pretty annoying. and there was this beggar, who was very persistent. i was posing for a shot with the background and she stood in front of the camera, asking for money. i shifted away, she continued to stick her hands out in front of me. i didnt give her money in the end. *ok. side track abit, there are super alot of beggars in the streets of shanghai. i even bumped into one who was asking for money in the train. omytian. i give occasionally when i have small change on me.. but if i give every beggar money, i think it'll be my turn asking for money in no time. ok back to the beautiful scenery.  picture perfect! i think we took at least 20 attempts to get the framing right. haha. after that, we headed back towards the train station and on the way, we chanced upon an arcade! haha. we played the basketball machine for 2RMB and attempted to...  catch a softtoy! one attempt here is 1RMB.. as compared to $1 in Singapore. haha. in china, with $1, u can try 4 times! so we tried our luck. n we had no luck. bleah. haha. but it's ok. it was cheap thrill for us. :) tml night we'll be going to sing k box! but i think im coming down with a sorethroat. i think i ate too much junk food here le. shall drown myself in water... |
| Shan ♥ 5:07 PM |
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