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Monday, December 31, 2007

Europe 2

PARIS


This is the cruise on the canal in Paris. The man you see photographing there seems to be in the water.....haha...there's actually an extra railing and extra seats over there. I'm sure you all didn't know that there is a miniature version of the Statue of Liberty along the canal, which was given to the French by the Americans as a "thank-you present" for giving the Statue of Liberty to them (US).





The view you can get on the Eiffel Tower.













The Arch of Triumph, built a year after Napoleon Bonaparte's death in commemoration of him.











Bugs Bunny is given a SMART BIKE!!!!!!!

I got sick after all these thanks to cheese nuggets and stupid "French" fries (the cold wasn't caused by the Belgian fries). Today night, I bought the diving watch I now wear to school. Today was the only day we had time for shopping....the whole tour was given 2 hours to shop-ONLY (thank goodness!!!!!). We were the only ones who bought stuff and we got a discount...if you lived there, you wouldn't even need one! My watch costs $65 (French Francs) and if you convert it, it's worth RM300+!!! Europeans must find everything really cheap...Well, my mother went to the shop thingy to get the tourist discount. Everyone already left to go to the diner. My aunt with the lifesaver jacket was supposed to come back and bring us to the restaurant. Unfortunately, when she came to "escort" us there, she lost her sense of direction.......*gasp*. There was a 2-way split road. My aunt couldn't remember if it was to the right or the left. We finally found the diner because we walked almost the whole road looking for it. It was a French restaurant. I remembered that that was the first time I ate escargots. Before that, I couldn't stand the thought of actually eating snail-like creatures. The escargots came with butter sauce with garlic.

LONDON
"When you're bored of London, you're bored of life"....haha....how can I EVER be bored of London....we Malaysians have been blacklisted by the English already thanks to several suicide bombers and terrorists who were believed to be trained here, RIGHT HERE in our country. Therefore, I am HONOURED to have entered England and saw London with my own eyes. At first, our tour guide was so afraid that some people from our tour would not be able to enter London and so, he told us the procedure on how to come back to M'sia if we were prohibited to enter. Forunately, our whole tour was allowed to enter, even the man who looked like a criminal. We took an underwater train to London. In the train station, I remembered 3 odd boys who went around trying to get into people's pictures while they were taking photos. They came up behind my aunt in one pic but I can't post it as it was deleted......The picture above is the "Wheel of Money" or better known as the Eye of London. This "Eye" is a money-making machine as you have to pay 50 POUNDS PER PERSON. One capsule can fit up to 50 persons...and the "Eye" is always full......
I'm sure ALL of you will think that the pic on the right is the famous London Bridge....but NO! This is the Tower Bridge. London Bridge is just a plain small bridge... the Tower bridge can unfold to let the cruise ship under it pass....how nice. I feel so naughty..............look at the oval shaped building in the distance... not me...

















This is Big Ben!!!!!!
leaving isn't really nice so I'm not going to stress on that......
My last meal there (dinner) was Wantan Mee.=P. The ground floor of 1 Utama New Wing reminds me of the London Airport. hahahahahahaha. NONE OF U HAVE BEEN THERE!!!!!!!!!!!



oh yea....that unidentified place I mentioned I forgot abt in the previous blog is Germany =).

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Sunday, December 30, 2007

Lifesaver Jacket (part 1)

Back. I have just found out that Louis Chong is in my class. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well, who cares? Back from my trip to Shanghai. I haven't uploaded the photos yet so I'll just share and remember the moments of my Europe trip.


30/11/04

This is Mount Titlis, the first place we visited in Europe. This mountain is located in Switzerland and is part of the Alps. This is also the fateful place where I coincidentially met Kok Yu Kane with his family. His dad was there on some business trip.....or at least I think that's what I remembered. It was really cold outside.....the temperature still remains a mystery as I wasn't that attentive last time. I think it was below 0 degree celcius. My father said we were lucky as most of the time, the weather was terrible up there and we won't be allowed to go outside. My mother vomited on the bus while we were on the way to the mountain. The tour guide mentioned that we Malaysians only FIX our stuff once we encounter problems. The Europeans MAINTAIN their stuff. The cable car up to Mount Titlis is consistently maintained every 2 months. It was just maintained the day before we arrived there(29/11/04). Our first meal there was rather plain. The sausages were nothing like Malaysian sausages. They were big....REALLY BIG. The taste was different. Apart from the sausages, I kind of forgotten the other dishes, though I am very sure that there were only 3 dishes. I remembered that we had to go through 3 cable car rides before we reached the peak.
I have completely forgotten what this lion represents. I think it has something to do with protecting the city or something......no....that sounds more like China.....At night, we stayed at....darn...I forgot. My memory is failing me.........precious moments lost!!!!!At night, I walked out with my first aunt. Until now I still can't believe that I actually walked with my jacket open!!! There were many smart cars around. At that time, we Malaysians were still outdated and so smart cars never existed to us yet. The smart cars only came out in our country in the beginning of year 2005. We saw it in advance. Muahahahahaha. A few days later, we would also get to see the smart motorbike, which "doesn't exist" in Malaysia until now.
1/12/04

We are currently in Germany now.This is the Rhine Falls. The water here is very little and shallow now. Tour guide says that during the summer, around June to July, the water flows the most. I think we saw ducks.....can't remember. We went to the Black Forest after this. It snowed there. At first, everyone thought it was dust.....it was really so small you just couldn't even see it. Fortunately for me, my eyesight was perfect at that time. Everyone was on their way to the restaurant for lunch and didn't stop to notice the small flakes. The snowflakes kept getting bigger and bigger. After lunch, the flakes were as big as 20 cent coins. We didn't take any pictures though...which was a waste....nobody took pictures of the snow....sad... Anyway, we tried out the famous German Black Forest cake. It's not like ours here. They put in generous chunks of blueberry in it. (Left): A very dark picture of our (black) meal. We saw 2 German ladies after that. They had the same breed of dogs, the Puli. They were so big that at first, I thought they reared bears. One was black and the other was white. After that, we also visited the clock-making factory.

2/12/04
I can't believe I actually forgotten this place!!!!!!! I remembered I had gastric here. This is so infuriating!!!!! To think that I had actually NOT remembered this place!!!!!!!!Let's see....Switz, Germ, !!!!@#!@%@#$^%@$!@#$!!!!!!, Ams, Belg, Par, Lon. WHAT THE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?...it's already 6 known countries....I travelled 6 countries- I remember this one!. Oh well then....this is still Germany. Or at least I THINK it is...the one on
the right is DEFINITELY Netherlands, or more commonly known as Holland. I bought a blue coloured candy here and I haven't eaten it until now. It was thrown away years ago...We visited the cheesemakers...my favourite part of the journey here.=P. Those people made shoes too (Holland's famous wooden clogs)....the pic below shows the inner part of the cathedral. It's so colourful right? On the outside, it looks black. Right now I can't remember the dates already, so now everything is timeless. (pic above was taken on the 3/12/04)















(4/12/04)
The picture was taken in Brussels. They use nuclear power as their power source and since it is so powerful, the Belgians don't need to off their streetlights in the daytime. My aunt in the pic above stimulated everyone in the tour to buy chocolates here in Brussels and nearly got everyone into trouble. The tour guide mentioned not to buy chocolates in Brussels as buying them in Brugge the following day would be nicer and cheaper.

5/12/04
This is Brugge, Belgium. This is the actual place where so-called "FRENCH FRIES" were born. Actually, the Belgian people created these fries. During World War 2, the Americans tried out the fries. They thought the Belgian people were French, therefore the name of the fries became French Fries. The American got the recipe from them and went back to their country to try it out. The Belgian Fries taste different and are SOOOOOOOOOOO tasty. The fries are so crispy on the outside but on the inside, it's so soft....like real potato!!!!! It goes with sauce, either mayonnaise or tomato. Then, we took a ride
along the canal. We went to a diamond shop within the canal. We had to take a boat there since it was a "river shop".We went to Paris after that. A lot of drama took place there. The birds in Paris were not afraid of humans at all. I chased the pigeons everywhere and they just would NOT fly away. They just run away quickly and if they're not fast enough, they fly a short distance away....still withink your reach. I managed to catch a pigeon. =). The two kids' father caught 2 pigeons. The pic below is what I call pigeon garden. This garden is located in front of the Louvre art museum. The Arc de Tromph (Arch Of Triumph) is opposite the Louvre and is the "entrance" to this garden.

The pic on the left is a group photo of my tour. We're standing in front of the Eiffel Tower (surely you know this!!!). We went up to only the first floor of the tower, as my tour guide said that that place was very scenic. We were told to wonder off anywhere we like within the first floor but one lady went off to the second floor (the lady in orange). That's when the problem starts....we were told to be back at a certain time, but the lady was late by 2 minutes (her watch was off-time). We were really punctual and set off at exactly the time given. Since the lady travelled alone, nobody noticed that she had not arrived yet. We left the Eiffel Tower to take a ride in the canal surrounding Paris (it was a wide circle). When the lady came down, she panicked and looked around to found the tour group, which was not in sight anymore. Then she caught sight of a bright blue jacket among the crowd (my aunt's jacket). She locked her eyes on my aunt's jacket and followed it. That was how she got back to the tour...otherwise she would be stuck in Paris. After that, my aunt's jacket earned it's reputation as the "Lifesaver Jacket".

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Thursday, December 27, 2007

Shanghai Revealed

Wednesday, 19th December 2007, M'sia-Shanghai-Wuzhen

My trip to Shanghai wasn't that bad. In fact, it was one the funniest trips I ever had....I went there together with my family and my first aunt. I woke up early on Wednesday, 19th of Dec 07 (I actually woke up around 6.45...quite late as I was expected to be up at 5.30 of excitement). We reached the airport quite early to find sooooooo many people in the airport queuing and waiting for the stupid luggage check-in thingy to open....it only opened around 7.30! pity my tour guide who had to be there at 5.....We didn't know that water bottles (most importantly WATER) wasn't allowed on the plane.....Oh well, 5 mineral bottles wasted......we kinda reached to departure area the last although we WEREN'T the last to reach.....we got the second last row in the aeroplane as a result....the air steward said that this was the safest part of the plane. Our stupid row didn't have the usual tables that hung down from the chair in front....instead, ours was hidden inside our armrest. This was because of the unfortunate number-of-seats difference. The row in front had 5 seats (occupied by the family of 4 and sum1 else unidentified) and ours only had 4 seats...unbalanced and unfair. The flight lasted for approximately 5 hours. I played chess for almost the whole flight , with the exception of an hour's efforts on cramming unnecessary burden into my head (F2 maths which I had missed from my tuition class). We reached there at around 2.30.

When we reached the Shanghai airport, we waited for our bus....and I was actually thinking that M'sia was less poluted than here....I read Reader's Digest of the November 07 issue (I think) that Shanghai and Beijing were the last 2 most "livable" cities among all the countries in the research thingy they held. I looked through the rest of my tour members (all of which I only found out about later in the tour)....a newly-wed couple, a family of 4 (2 kids, one 12 and 15) and a family of 8 (5 kids, 1 my age, one 19, the rest unidentified....parents and a maternal grandmother). The oldest kid in the tour was a 19-year old guy who studies in Australia. We took the bus-ride for approximately 3-4 hours starting from 4.00 pm and had a toilet break once around 6 (I did not take a trip to the loo here as I did not drink any water). The journey on the bus continued until about 7. We had our dinner then. It was really cold....I did not wear my thermal yet but I DID wear 4 layers of clothing....and I was still cold....I think it was 'cos of the wind.....the food was really salty but since we were so hungry, we just gobbled it up. After the dinner, we headed for Wuzhen Water Village, a living fossil of ancient oriental civilization for its profound history,cultural, graceful water town scenery. We stayed in a 5-star hotel (not bad actually). When I reached the hotel, I quickly wore my long-john thermal and went out again....in 3 and a half layers. Then, the whole tour went around the town to explore. The pic on the right shows the biggest wok in the world. If there's a "King of Cooking" in the world, that guy could use this wok as a throne =) The tour went back to the hotel around 8.00 pm. My parents, my aunt and I continued walking on. There isn't really much to see at night, but we saw multiple bridges that, when seen from a certain angle, looks like a dragon. My father went back after seeing this "landmark". I insisted on walking on so my mother and my aunt followed. We turned back after seeing deserted streets and inns.


Thursday, 20th December 07, Wuzhen-Hangzhou

I woke up at 6.45 am today (before the morning call at 7). I got ready in less than 15 minutes which included drinking lots of water, brushing my teeth before breakfast (dfjsdbgbsdgb) and changing. I reached my parent's room at 7.15 am. My father and I went out to eat breakfast first while my mother waited for my aunt who said that waking up early was unnecessary.....The breakfast was quite alright (it was buffet)...the fried rice was the best today, the noodles were oily and saltish, the black rice cake tasted like dessert (I think it was supposed to be dessert)...there was some sort of cake called rice cake and it tasted sweet, and the best was the rolled up crackers thingy (poh piah, if that's how u spell it) with seaweed inside it. My mother came down before my aunt (gave up waiting....XD) about 20-30 mins later while my aunt was more than half an hour late (OOPS!). After breakfast, 4 of us took a walk around the whole water town and discovered some very ancient-looking places (we read somewhere around the town that this town is a national heritage). We also walked until the turning point and went in slightly deeper and off-track to see a pagoda. We saw several shops selling different kinds of stuff like winter shoes (handmade, with fur inside), batik and some other stuff of colourful folk customs wear.

We departed around 9.30 to go to Hangzhou. We ate lunch around 11.00 at the same place as our dinner the previous night. We reached Hangzhou around 3.00 (2.45+ to be exact). We changed tour guide here. This is the lake in Hangzhou (West Lake). The panorama here is beautiful. We didn't walk round the whole lake as that would be approximately 15km long. We went to a museum (West Lake Museum) after taking a short walk. Our tour guide mentioned about a fruit which can foam up when soaked with water and some people use that fruit as soap (soap fruit!!!!!!! see pic). In the museum, we saw lots of paintings...every painting had a story to it. After we came out of the museum, we walked around a bit but unfortunately, our camera ran out of battery.....and even our last hope died off (my aunt put her camera on stand-by the whole time....I'm not exactly sure, but I think that's y her battery ran out). The pic on the left (about a dragon and a phoenix) was the last picture we took after our camera died. There was a commotion on our way out of the museum. 2 guys on a motorcycle knocked each other and they were fighting in front of a policeman (HAHAHAHAHA).We ate dinner around 5.30 (everyday....so my appetite was lost..bad timing for me). After that, we went visit the first largest Song Dynasty Culture Theme Park to see a show (Romance of The 3 Kingdoms) featuring Song Culture. It was like a play except that the effects were spectacular. It was really amazing (except the fact that out camera was dead). I bought an ocarina today (an instrument made out of clay). It was in a shape of a black leaf. It has 6 holes in front and 2 holes at the back of it. It's like a recorder, see pic.









Friday, 21st Dec 07, Hangzhou 2
I got up 15 minutes after my alarm phone rang. In short, I got up at 7. It was raining terribly today. We didn't really do much in the morning....just walked around the
West lake again. Then, we had our lunch and went to a Yuewang Temple, it was built to honour and commemorate General Yue Fei, who was successfully led his troops to victory against the Jin invader. Lunch was kinda interesting as after the meal, we saw lots of things Chinese folks eat and we don't dare to even touch. We saw lots of snakes kept in bottles just like our preserved fruits. When we came out, we were on our way to a lake cruise. On the way there, we had to go through some underground tunnel. On the way out, we had to use an escalator. Mummy, Hui Qian and I were far ahead of our tour. 3 of us took the escalator first and reached the top before the rest of our tour. At the top, Hui Qian found an escalator some excalator buttons and pressed one. Next thing we knew, the escalator stopped. Just at that moment, our tour guide was about a metre from reaching us. Hui Qian panicked and pressed another button. Almost instantly, the escalator moved backwards. After abit of fiddling, she got the escalator to stop and function properly again. That was probably the funniest thing that happened in the whole trip. After that, we took a cruise around the West Lake (at exactly 2.00 pm). It was rather misty but still, the scenery was great. The pic on the right was taken during the cruise on the lake. These are mandarin ducks. I was lucky to have caught the female duck flapping its wings =) After that, we took a walk somewhere around some garden. The place was very scenic. There were willow trees almost everywhere we went. The rain DID stop but it was still very misty, creating that
sort of mysterious atmosphere. I bought another ocarina today, a brown one. This time, it was a bigger one with a lower sound range. There was a dragon carving on it.









Saturday, 22nd Dec 07, Hangzhou-Suzhou
I woke up half an hour later than my alarm phone today (OUCH!). We changed tour guide again. We visited a Hanshan Temple, Winter Hill Temple in Mandarin, famous for its bell rings and Buddhism culture. It rained today again. In the temple we visited, you could pay 5 Yuen to ring the bell 3 times. If you try to ring 4 times though, they presume you want to be a monk and will shave you bald and ask you to strip(hahahahahaha). There were wishing trees and souvenir shops within the temple. After that, we went to another place (the leaning pagoda) which was quite scenic at Tiger Hill.




The leaning pagoda.....skywards.....

Information about the pagoda.

A beautiful view on the way out of the place.

After that, we went to the 3 Lions Garden. This garden was rather rocky but really scenic....our current tour guide wouldn't slow down much to let us snap some pics though. Oh well, I guess I'll just slow down and find my way through. There were mazes in the garden (hallelujah!) but we didn't stop to take the challenge (NOOOOO!!!!). I tried to take a pic of dew on tree branches here but it turned out as a work of failure many times. At evening, free shopping at Guanqian Walking Street before adjourned to dinner. At night, my parents and my aunt went to some massage place and did foot reflexology. They went with another 6 people (I think). I had to stay in another tour member's room for around 2 hours. We watched TV and ate maggie noodles. We were kind of shocked to find out that we were actually watching The Omen for about half an hour.....somebody actually died.....I went back to my room around 10 to take my shower. Those who went for the massage came back around 11.

Sunday, 23rd Dec 07, Suzhou-Nanjing

We visited a silk factory in the morning. We bought lots of silk stuff. I got a silk pillow and pillow-case. I thought the rest were unnecessary. My parents bought the "unnecessary" stuff though. Everything totalled up to 8000+ Yuen. After which we were on our way to Nanjing to have ducks lunch, which means every dish contained ducks. We went to National Park of China in the afternoon around 4. We took our group photo there and climbed alot. The pic on the left shows a short distance walk which shouldn't be underestimated too early.


This pic shows that we are almost reaching........











TORTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tour guide said there were 321 steps here..... (I think...can't remember).

There wasn't really much at the top once I made it there. There was a statue thingy on the left and the toilet on the right. There was a mausoleum for Dr San Yat Sen, the father of Republic of China in the middle (the blue-roofed building on top).


After that, we went to a famous bridge, Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. It is a double deck and double service bridge built completely without external assistance which China was so proud of. The government of China wants to demolish this bridge to replace it with another one but the public has protested against it because the bridge holds sentimental memories. Then we went down (in the bridge) to look at the glass paintings. My favourite painting was on a glass vase. The theme was fishes. My mother liked the horse paintings. After that, we ate dinner and went shopping at Confucian Temple(NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!). We were supposed to go for a cruise at the Qinhuai River to admire the night view along the river side but unfortunately the canal was under repair. So sad. At night, our room (I share rooms with my aunt) had a "heat" problem. We couldn't figure out where the heater switch was. My aunt told me to look for a button for the heater. I saw a red unidentified button. Yes, there were chinese characters on it and I knew how to read them. Unfortunately, I was desperate for the heater and pressed it before I knew what I was doing. BIG OOPS! About 5 minutes later, the police arrived (with a gun). My aunt was confused. The people opposite our room came out to see what the commotion was about. It turns out they are Sabahans and are a Hakkah people too. The lady's husband came in to our room with the policeman, walked over to that red button which read "Press to call police"; in Mandarin 'Gong An' and used a key to turn it back to normal. HAHAHAHAHA

Monday, 24th Dec 07, Nanjing-Wuxi

We woke up early to go to some place to see jades. Today, I figured that a master negotiator was among us. Seriously, at 19 years old, a guy named Lim Kee Jiang (I think) could bargain an 18k Yuen jade pendant to 3k Yuen for my mother. His mum could bargain a 30k+ bangle to 3k+(somewhere in M'sia). My jade pendant's price was also reduced from 4k Yuen to about 1k Yuen. My pendant was a laughing buddha. I heard that his father could negotiate prices until the seller couldn't get any commission. Wow.......I want the father to help us. Heard they live in Ampang...ONLY... not that far. We could always get their help.....anyway, even his sister who's about 17 in 2008 "compressed" the price of 3 laughing buddha pendants worth 4k each to become 3k for 3 (plus the addition of free gifts)!!!!! After that, we went to Wuxi. We visited a The Lingshan Grand Buddha. The Statue of Buddha- 88m in height, 42m taller than The Statue of Liberty on the other side of ocean. We were given 1.30 hours there. Our tour was extended by one day and so we were given more time here than any other groups. The place looked sealed up by a sleeping dragon, very good feng shui place. LOOKED. My father didn't believe that we could climb up the hill to the golden Buddha on the hilltop. I tried to convince him as the place looked small and the tour people wouldn't be dumb enough to let us dawdle around here. We went to the back and DID find an entrance to the back. A small little humble entrance. We climbed all the way up and my aunt and I bought the tickets up to the golden Buddha up there (tickets required...).
It looks so near from here. But the actual distance can be measured by the picture on the right. . We actually had to buy tickets to go right to the top (see the golden buddha on the left? The bigger and obviously at the higher altitude one). After climbing all the way to the top, we went down again to see a show, the fountain opened with young buddhas inside. After dinner went shopping at Yaohan Shopping Mall. Dad got angry with me for urging him not to smoke. After this we went back to the hotel.






Tuesday, 25 Dec 07, Wuxi-Shanghai

Today morning, we found a double-yolked egg (TWIN CHICKS!!!!!). It's raining again today, and everything's all misty. We went to this The City of Three Kingdoms, the largest movie shooting bases located along Taihu Lake. The architectures are true to details from Han Dynasty. We could see the simulation of the Chinese forts (I think) and palace. We went for a cruise ride on Taihu Lake, the famous producer of pearls and Hui Qian (the 12-year old girl and I went to the 1st storey).We saw a "horsy" perfomance by the Chinese "generals" after the cruise. The "generals" did stunts on their horses to dramatise the show. It was actually about a war....ancient war. We travelled everywhere within the place on the train-like vehicle. After that, we went to a pearl factory. There, we were shown how to pearls were obtained. We were then given the pearls as souvenirs. Each person only received a tiny pearl. See the pearls below? The oyster looked rather disgusting at first sight though. There was also pearl cream. Rather odd-looking. It was made of gel and there were pearls in it. Funny that the pearls were soft and like powder. We bought that and pearl powder too. They claimed that the pearl powder can give numerous "healthy" effects on the consumer but this is not exactly scientifically proven as in other places, processing pearl powder requires mercury. My mother was tempted to buy a pearl pendant. The big boss recommended the golden pearl which was always more expensive. Somehow, golden stuff seems to be more expensive. The pendant, which was a "twin" pendant, one gold and one white pearl, was supposed to cost 14.5k. It was reduced by the great negotiator until 4k. Apart from that, we also got a free pair of earrings. =). All hail the great negotiatior!!! Unfortunately, I overheard a conversation that the boss actually offered a pearl worth 100k and reduced it down to around 10k+. That was such a waste because nobody bought it!!!!! That was VERY VERY DUMB. We had lunch after that and left for Shanghai. We reached Shanghai quite late. We started shopping (DARN!) at Nanjing Road Walking Street. Then, we had dinner in a "floating" restaurant. It was seriously floating. It was a real cruise ship. After that, we went to The Bund to enjoy a sight of magnificient buildings with different architecture. Then, a cruise on Huangpu River which separated the east and west of Shanghai to form the picture of the sign of Ying and Yang. To get to that cruise, we had to overcome many obstacles......such as getting through lightyears and lightyears of space....after those obstacles, FREEDOM!!!!! When the cruise was over, we went to an extremely tall tower (Oriental Pearl Tower). Not sure if this building is taller than the KLCC tower. We went up to the 263rd floor (cool huh?). Too bad we only got to go up to the 2nd sphere for a glimpse of Shanghai. There were 3 spheres I think. The whole city looked extremely misty from up there. Crystal versions of the buildings around the tower were there in display glass boxes. We checked in to the hotel quite late, around 11 if I'm not mistaken. I decide to check out the city (first time!). My mother, my aunt and I walked down a street near the hotel. We saw Hui Qian and her dad walking around too. Looks like she wants to get a chocolate drink. There was a shop which only sold drinks. She's in luck. There, she and her dad separate from us. We wanted to get something to eat. We found a restaurant. We ate "Yu Tiao" there. I only found out later that it was "Yao Cha Guai" however you spell it.... We saw The Negotiator there too with his sister (the almost brownish haired one, also another negotiator). Hui Qian went there too after a while because it seems that the "drink shop" only sell coffee. I ordered cold soya bean while all those smart people from my tour ordered HOT soya bean. Pity them.....the Chinese were really honest. Really hot soya bean. No one could drink their soya bean for over half an hour (we finished the meal after 12). I decided not to bath that day since I was a deep sleeper and can't get up that easily.

Wednesday, 26th Dec 07, Shanghai 2

We went to a memorial place for Song Ching Ling the honorary chair woman of the People's Republic of China, wife of Dr San Yat Sen. She lived from 1893-1981. After that, we went to listen to a Feng Shui master. He talked alot about Pixius. We bought 9 Pixius that day. 2 for each person in the family and 3 other gigantic Pixius. It was SO heavy! After that, we went to The Shanghai Movie Studios. No, there were no famous actors or actresses there. So freaky. They should make the visit coincide with some sort of filming or shooting so we won't just come see the facades of some empty buildings. We entered a white building and there were exhibitions on different places. After that, we went to visit a clay teapot factory. The negotiator's family started negotiating again. One A grade teapot set was worth 1k. The family bought 2 A grade teapot set and a



free B grade teapot set-all in 1k. The pictures on the left are of the Universal Studios. The picture of the white building we entered is also accompanied by a small picture of the negotiator (fiddling with his 1k+ camera). In the pic too is his brother and his sister. Then, there's the eye of China...At night, we went to see an acrobatic performance. There were 2 girls who were so flexible they could bend the other way round and end up like flowers (heads as the middle and legs and hands like the petals). Then there were young boys who could do so many odd stuff like juggling their mexican hats and wearing them at the same time. They could even play around with hoops and turning round and round in them. Too bad our camera was almost out of battery. We only snapped photos of an incredible boy who balanced on more than 10 chairs stacked on top of

each other. The top chair was slanted and he was sitting comfortably in it. He even balanced upside down on the slanted chair. That was the most cheered performance. After that, the grand finale....4 men were caged in a spherical metal cage with their motorbikes and they were supposed to ride within the cage without hitting each other. This included riding upside down and sideways without stopping at all. The lights were also turned off so that we could see the special light effects on the motorbikes. After the show, we went to some place where there were lots of night clubs and pubs which called Sin Tean Ti. We ate Haagen-Daz (I think this is how you spell it) ice-cream there. A different kind of feel when eating ice cream in winter.













Thursday, 27th Dec 07, Shanghai-M'sia



It was raining again today. We went to Chenghuang Temple, the area has the street of old and new temples, foods, handicraft and ate those famous Chinese dumplings there. We also ordered some prawn thingy which was kinda nice too. After that, we went to eat lunch at a rather weird restaurant. Actually it wasn't really odd. It was kind of cool. The waiters and waitresses there wore skates to move around faster (WOW!). After that, we were on our way home...not yet! There are still odd things to mention. We took a ride on a train which could go up to 431km per hour!!!!!! It was so fast that taking pictures of the speed we were travelling at was so difficult. I finally managed it before the speed declined. We reached the airport in 7 minutes. No water was allowed in again......this time we wasted more than 6 bottles!!!!!! We headed back for Malaysia and reached around 9.30. Guess what?????? We waited for our luggages to arrive up till 11 something...hopeless in M'sia isn't it? Then I called Angeline to ask about my class....found out I got Batai....DARN!!!! Lucky she's not asleep yet though....School's gonna start....wonder how it's gonna be like............

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