Unpacking. Packing.
Its a total headache. I just got home from my 19+ days adventure of Tibet and Shanghai. Boy, am I glad its over. Now I'm left with slightly over 2 days in Beijing before I finally head back HOME. Yes, Home. Singapore.
So many things to do. I hope I have enough time for everything :)
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
my last.... bath....
Yesterday, 10th July was our last day of work. Man, it feels good to be finally done with the attachment. However, with the end of work means.. the start of holidays (yay!) AND.... that.. school is going to start soon (WAH LAO!) which translates to FYP, exams, FYP, exams, FYP, exams.. yea, you get the idea.
Ok, I just took my last bath for the next 48 hours (at least). I will be boarding the train to Tibet in another hour and half and the journey will last.. GASP. 48 hours. Feels like being imprisioned for 2 whole days. I hope I won't be suffering from any ill-effects from the trip and that everything will be alright :)
Mount everest! HERE I COME!! woo~
Oh well, I will be internet-less until I come back to Beijing which will be roughly in about 19 days time. So until then, if you guys want to contact me (which I doubt you will do), you can sms me via my sg number! I will be checking it every night :)
Till then, take care people!
Ok, I just took my last bath for the next 48 hours (at least). I will be boarding the train to Tibet in another hour and half and the journey will last.. GASP. 48 hours. Feels like being imprisioned for 2 whole days. I hope I won't be suffering from any ill-effects from the trip and that everything will be alright :)
Mount everest! HERE I COME!! woo~
Oh well, I will be internet-less until I come back to Beijing which will be roughly in about 19 days time. So until then, if you guys want to contact me (which I doubt you will do), you can sms me via my sg number! I will be checking it every night :)
Till then, take care people!
Friday, July 10, 2009
Escape from Beijing 5: Qingdao
Think Qingdao. What do you think?
I think.. BEER! MANY MANY BEERS!
Qingdao is basically a port and therefore near the coast. So naturally, there are beaches, sand, sea breeze and loads of sun!
It used to be a German port in the early 1900s and therefore the structure and layout of the city is heavily influenced by the German model.
I was getting quite sick of climbing mountains, seeing temples and traditional Chinese architecture and this was a welcome relief.
Now, the aim of this short weekend trip is to slack and "nua", get a good rest and have an enjoyable break.
Although I did plan quite a number of attractions but We didn't get to go as many of them. BUT, it was really fine with me cause it wasn't important.
Day 1:
We took the train at 6.45am (we were almost late, scrambling for our stuff cause we overslept) and arrived in Qingdao at 12.34pm.
HELLO QINGDAO!!!!!!!
As the seabreeze hits your face, it carries away with it your worries and uncertainties. It made me feel.. relaxed somehow.
That was a good sign cause I was going to "nua" my 4 days away.
We headed for our hostel, Kaiyue International Youth Hostel, and dropped our bags before heading out for lunch. Seafood seafood!
There's really cheap seafood around but there are also the expensive ones.
Tsingtao Beer museum (along Beer street, how cool does that sound?) was the next destination and I was having loads of fun in the "Drunken Room" where one gets the drunk feeling in this specially constructed room. Basically, it just throws ur senses and gravitational sense off balance so you can't really walk properly. HAHA. That room was super duper fun but too bad, there were simply too many people around to do anything crazy.
The visit there was concluded with a jug (1.25litres) of Tsingtao beer for the 3 of us. Crazy man! How to finish?? We didn't lar. Or at least I tried by drinking alot.
We headed for seafood dinner after the visit. Man, I miss seafood.
We had loads of shell, way too many. Shengyuan ordered abalone. 1 for 28rmb. Cheap Cheap Cheap Cheap.
Abalone :)
After dinner, we walked down further to a night market near Carrefour. I forgot what's that night market called. Now, Qingdao has about.. 3-4 night markets at different areas and they sell a variety of stuff. The best market will be at Taidong Pedestrian Street where its HUGE (we went there on our 2nd night)
Walking around aimlessly, time passed really quickly.
Day 2:
Walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk.
We took the seaside walk. Estimated to be about... 10km? haha.
From 10am till... 7pm? Before we eventually gave up when we tried looking for our German Restaurant. (more on that later)
We went.. Zhan Qiao, Lu Xun Park, Bathing Beach 6, 1, 2, 3, Ba Da Guan, Hua Shi Lou, Musical Square, Wu Shi Guang Chang.
I actually got sun burnt while walking through out the day. Interesting huh? I guess that goes to show how much we actually walked.
The bathing beaches are overly crowded and they have a wide range of activities and there are people working out at the outdoor gym in swimming trunks. Weird.
At Zhan Qiao, there were so many people selling sea shells and starfish which was fished out from the sea. Just walk about 20 steps and you will see a crowd at different points buying the shells.
At Ba Da Guan, there are like hundreds of couples doing their photoshoot. The ladies are decently dressed but the guys.. terrible dress sense. A number of them were in suits and most of them had ugly shirts to match. What happened to dressing up for the occasion?
Hua Shi Lou
From Wu Shi Guang Chang, we decided to head for dinner at this German restaurant, Monnemer Eck which was along Jiang Xi Lu. God. Jiang Xi Lu is like freaking Orchard Road x 3 lar! We were at the start of it (No. 35) and we had to locate No. 173. We were so tired by the walk we flagged a cab and the cab ride took 10 mins. Can you imagine how long we would take to walk to the place? Like another freaking hour? We had nice sausages. Rocks :)
As there was still time, we went over to the highly recommended Taidong Bu Xing Jie night market. This market is the largest amongst all the night markets here in Qingdao and they sell everything; bedsheets, clothes, shoes, towels, slippers, bags... etc etc etc. We eventually bought a huge towel in preparation for our beach trip the next day. Nice.
Day 3:
As the bathing beaches on Qingdao main island suck. Golden sand beach was our destination to slack and suntan. Golden sand beach is location on Huang Dao and we had to take a ferry there. However, when buying tickets, please queue up for the Xue Jia Dao ferry instead. Express ride (20mins) is available when the weather is good. Unfortunately for us, we had to take the slow 45 mins ride there and back.
In our short time at the beach, we observed that many guys have matching swimming trunks. Its like a form of identity. Lol. The locals seem to like making themselves wet before burying themselves in sand, as if the sand has some minerals to do sand-bathing. In addition, many kids roam around the beach naked. I wonder why their parents seem to like them to go commando. Weird.
The sand there was definitely fine. So much better than the normal ones. We basically lied down on our nice towel and sunbathed. Nua-ed! Shiok. Falling asleep on the beach can be so shiok and I didn't know it. Maybe the sun in Singapore isn't as forgiving.
Day 4:
It rained and this disrupted our plans to walk around. However, we still managed to cover the catholic and protestant churches as well as the Observatory tower which gave us a bird's eye view of Qingdao. The buildings were totally awesome (cause I'm sick of seeing traditional Chinese temples and such). In between, we spent an hour watching "The Sound of Music" in the hostel's lounge while waiting for the rain to stop though. Now, that's "nua" for you. Haha. Totally brings out the mood of the trip.
I did what the locals do! Buy the roadside Tsingtao beer which is sold to you in plastic bags!! I bought an entire bag which cost me 7rmb. Cheap cheap cheap.
But compared to the fresh beer from the museum, this was.. ehrm.. not as good. Too bad I don't have the pictures of that. Very interesting lor.
As time passed, we found ourselves making a mad scramble to the train station to board the ride back to Beijing. Darn. Such a good trip.
I miss the sea breeze, cooling weather, cheap ice-cream, milk tea, seafood.
One thing to note: roads in Qingdao are named after places in China. Like... Tibet Road, Nanjing Road, Hong Kong Road.. blah blah. Very interesting.
I think.. BEER! MANY MANY BEERS!
Qingdao is basically a port and therefore near the coast. So naturally, there are beaches, sand, sea breeze and loads of sun!
It used to be a German port in the early 1900s and therefore the structure and layout of the city is heavily influenced by the German model.
I was getting quite sick of climbing mountains, seeing temples and traditional Chinese architecture and this was a welcome relief.
Now, the aim of this short weekend trip is to slack and "nua", get a good rest and have an enjoyable break.
Although I did plan quite a number of attractions but We didn't get to go as many of them. BUT, it was really fine with me cause it wasn't important.
Day 1:
We took the train at 6.45am (we were almost late, scrambling for our stuff cause we overslept) and arrived in Qingdao at 12.34pm.
HELLO QINGDAO!!!!!!!
As the seabreeze hits your face, it carries away with it your worries and uncertainties. It made me feel.. relaxed somehow.
That was a good sign cause I was going to "nua" my 4 days away.
We headed for our hostel, Kaiyue International Youth Hostel, and dropped our bags before heading out for lunch. Seafood seafood!
There's really cheap seafood around but there are also the expensive ones.
Tsingtao Beer museum (along Beer street, how cool does that sound?) was the next destination and I was having loads of fun in the "Drunken Room" where one gets the drunk feeling in this specially constructed room. Basically, it just throws ur senses and gravitational sense off balance so you can't really walk properly. HAHA. That room was super duper fun but too bad, there were simply too many people around to do anything crazy.
The visit there was concluded with a jug (1.25litres) of Tsingtao beer for the 3 of us. Crazy man! How to finish?? We didn't lar. Or at least I tried by drinking alot.
We headed for seafood dinner after the visit. Man, I miss seafood.
We had loads of shell, way too many. Shengyuan ordered abalone. 1 for 28rmb. Cheap Cheap Cheap Cheap.
Abalone :)
After dinner, we walked down further to a night market near Carrefour. I forgot what's that night market called. Now, Qingdao has about.. 3-4 night markets at different areas and they sell a variety of stuff. The best market will be at Taidong Pedestrian Street where its HUGE (we went there on our 2nd night)
Walking around aimlessly, time passed really quickly.
Day 2:
Walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk.
We took the seaside walk. Estimated to be about... 10km? haha.
From 10am till... 7pm? Before we eventually gave up when we tried looking for our German Restaurant. (more on that later)
We went.. Zhan Qiao, Lu Xun Park, Bathing Beach 6, 1, 2, 3, Ba Da Guan, Hua Shi Lou, Musical Square, Wu Shi Guang Chang.
I actually got sun burnt while walking through out the day. Interesting huh? I guess that goes to show how much we actually walked.
The bathing beaches are overly crowded and they have a wide range of activities and there are people working out at the outdoor gym in swimming trunks. Weird.
At Zhan Qiao, there were so many people selling sea shells and starfish which was fished out from the sea. Just walk about 20 steps and you will see a crowd at different points buying the shells.
At Ba Da Guan, there are like hundreds of couples doing their photoshoot. The ladies are decently dressed but the guys.. terrible dress sense. A number of them were in suits and most of them had ugly shirts to match. What happened to dressing up for the occasion?
Hua Shi Lou
As there was still time, we went over to the highly recommended Taidong Bu Xing Jie night market. This market is the largest amongst all the night markets here in Qingdao and they sell everything; bedsheets, clothes, shoes, towels, slippers, bags... etc etc etc. We eventually bought a huge towel in preparation for our beach trip the next day. Nice.
Day 3:
As the bathing beaches on Qingdao main island suck. Golden sand beach was our destination to slack and suntan. Golden sand beach is location on Huang Dao and we had to take a ferry there. However, when buying tickets, please queue up for the Xue Jia Dao ferry instead. Express ride (20mins) is available when the weather is good. Unfortunately for us, we had to take the slow 45 mins ride there and back.
In our short time at the beach, we observed that many guys have matching swimming trunks. Its like a form of identity. Lol. The locals seem to like making themselves wet before burying themselves in sand, as if the sand has some minerals to do sand-bathing. In addition, many kids roam around the beach naked. I wonder why their parents seem to like them to go commando. Weird.
The sand there was definitely fine. So much better than the normal ones. We basically lied down on our nice towel and sunbathed. Nua-ed! Shiok. Falling asleep on the beach can be so shiok and I didn't know it. Maybe the sun in Singapore isn't as forgiving.
Day 4:
It rained and this disrupted our plans to walk around. However, we still managed to cover the catholic and protestant churches as well as the Observatory tower which gave us a bird's eye view of Qingdao. The buildings were totally awesome (cause I'm sick of seeing traditional Chinese temples and such). In between, we spent an hour watching "The Sound of Music" in the hostel's lounge while waiting for the rain to stop though. Now, that's "nua" for you. Haha. Totally brings out the mood of the trip.
I did what the locals do! Buy the roadside Tsingtao beer which is sold to you in plastic bags!! I bought an entire bag which cost me 7rmb. Cheap cheap cheap.
But compared to the fresh beer from the museum, this was.. ehrm.. not as good. Too bad I don't have the pictures of that. Very interesting lor.
As time passed, we found ourselves making a mad scramble to the train station to board the ride back to Beijing. Darn. Such a good trip.
I miss the sea breeze, cooling weather, cheap ice-cream, milk tea, seafood.
One thing to note: roads in Qingdao are named after places in China. Like... Tibet Road, Nanjing Road, Hong Kong Road.. blah blah. Very interesting.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Random-ness again part 2
2 things to update. Short update.
1) motherland officially banned facebook. Guess my premonition was right back when they banned google. Man, are they going to ban msn next?
2) my laptop is threatening to crash again. omg. This is totally insane. I need to back-up my data and reformat once again but I'm afraid I don't have enough time to do all of that before I leave on Saturday.
ARGH!!!!
1) motherland officially banned facebook. Guess my premonition was right back when they banned google. Man, are they going to ban msn next?
2) my laptop is threatening to crash again. omg. This is totally insane. I need to back-up my data and reformat once again but I'm afraid I don't have enough time to do all of that before I leave on Saturday.
ARGH!!!!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Summer time of our lives
We took a visit to the Summer Palace during the previous weekend before I embarked on my Qingdao Trip but I guess it wasn't as good as I expected it to be. Perhaps I got kind of bored looking at the same architecture over and over again (which can explain why I decided to head for my trip). Instead of opting for the easy way down to the palace (via bus), Junwei found a brilliant route where we could take a boat ride to the palace. Sounds cool right?
It was until 10 mins into the ride. Haha. We boarded the boat which was vastly empty and we were enjoying the cool summer breeze until the board stopped at its first station and almost the entire Chinese population boarded. Horror of all horrors. No more nice cosy comfy peaceful ride. Halfway into the ride, We were informed that we had to change boats halfway as the original boat is not allowed pass some waters (or some sort). Surprises still awaits us.. the 2nd boat that supposedly leads to the palace stopped outside as we didn't purchase the entrance tickets and we had to walk in. FYI, its a freaking long way to the palace from the south gate. I bet any assassination attempts would have been put off by the seemingly huge distance to run and hide.
At 40rmb, the boat ride was a little overpriced (hey, its a tourist trap) but its certainly quite a different experience but one might want to choose a weekday to really enjoy the sights peacefully. Gosh, i'm just too lazy to talk anymore about the palace. So I shall just leave you guys with pictures alright? I guess its all self-explanatory.
Haha. Rock on. Qingdao here I come!
It was until 10 mins into the ride. Haha. We boarded the boat which was vastly empty and we were enjoying the cool summer breeze until the board stopped at its first station and almost the entire Chinese population boarded. Horror of all horrors. No more nice cosy comfy peaceful ride. Halfway into the ride, We were informed that we had to change boats halfway as the original boat is not allowed pass some waters (or some sort). Surprises still awaits us.. the 2nd boat that supposedly leads to the palace stopped outside as we didn't purchase the entrance tickets and we had to walk in. FYI, its a freaking long way to the palace from the south gate. I bet any assassination attempts would have been put off by the seemingly huge distance to run and hide. At 40rmb, the boat ride was a little overpriced (hey, its a tourist trap) but its certainly quite a different experience but one might want to choose a weekday to really enjoy the sights peacefully. Gosh, i'm just too lazy to talk anymore about the palace. So I shall just leave you guys with pictures alright? I guess its all self-explanatory.
Haha. Rock on. Qingdao here I come!
Friday, July 3, 2009
Random-ness again
This week has been busy busy busy.
Busy planning the Qingdao aka Tsingdao (青岛）trip which will be happening in just another couple of hours. It was a pretty late and rash decision I would say as it was decided only a week prior to the departure date.
This will purely be a chill and relax trip. Time to re-energize myself for the long trips ahead!
Within the course of the last posting and this, I have visited the Summer Palace (颐和园）but will be posted when I'm back from my short getaway. I hope I have covered most of the attractions in Beijing although I know there are actually plenty of places and things that Beijing has to offer which I haven't been or done. Time's running out.
Actually, last weekend was officially my last weekend in Beijing! Gasp.
So fast right! I couldn't believe it man.
...and...
Edmund is now here in Beijing! Woo~
Good luck to him. HAHAHA.
Oh, watching Chinese soccer matches live is actually quite interesting. Witness how players fall to the ground all so easily and fighting is the norm of the game. The atmosphere is... well, intense and yet abit immature. LOL.
Shall get back on this posting after I am back.
Busy planning the Qingdao aka Tsingdao (青岛）trip which will be happening in just another couple of hours. It was a pretty late and rash decision I would say as it was decided only a week prior to the departure date.
This will purely be a chill and relax trip. Time to re-energize myself for the long trips ahead!
Within the course of the last posting and this, I have visited the Summer Palace (颐和园）but will be posted when I'm back from my short getaway. I hope I have covered most of the attractions in Beijing although I know there are actually plenty of places and things that Beijing has to offer which I haven't been or done. Time's running out.
Actually, last weekend was officially my last weekend in Beijing! Gasp.
So fast right! I couldn't believe it man.
...and...
Edmund is now here in Beijing! Woo~
Good luck to him. HAHAHA.
Oh, watching Chinese soccer matches live is actually quite interesting. Witness how players fall to the ground all so easily and fighting is the norm of the game. The atmosphere is... well, intense and yet abit immature. LOL.
Shall get back on this posting after I am back.
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