so it's the the first day of the new year! gosh 2008 went fast. like really. i feel like i barely accomplished anything! hopefully though looking to the new year, 2009 will hold better things!
okay so as promised, i still have a lot more photos to share from my travels. the rest of these start from tuesday last week, when we took a ferry over from hong kong to zhongsan. my uncle and aunty have been living there for the past four years, and let me tell you, after spending a week in hong kong, relatively unplanned about where to go and what to see, it was such a fantastic feeling to have a tour guide and a driver!!! since my uncle is the general manager for a plant over there, he was so cool to have his driver take us around zhongsan and then take two day trips to shenzhen and guangzhou. it's always really good when you meet family abroad though!
anyhow, here's the snaps and a rundown of our china trip so far:
this is the CKS ferry that we hopped on, it was about a one and a half hours ride from HK to zhongsan. seeing that we were all pretty knackered, we slept through most of it anyway! so no, i don't actually remember it being very bumpy, but it sure was foggy outside! but then again, maybe it could've been thick smog or pollution, in china, you never really know!
so maybe the van curtin is slightly in the way, but still it was a funny sight! so that makes two motorcyclists that i've seen carrying some heavy duty equipment! one guy tied a washing machine to the back of his bike! i really was waiting to see a guy carrying 15 people stacked up. would've made for quite a photo huh?
in guangzhou, we went for lunch at a thai restaurant called Banana Leaf. so we get seated, i look around, quite bewildered at the two massive trees which seem to spread all over the ceiling. so naturally, i look up to check out the superficiality of the tree leaves. but then, i don't see bananas hanging from the tree, but i see a multitude of massive durians! i'm not sure if that was intentional, or if they just couldn't find fake bananas to hang off the tree (but then it is china and they can make anything right?) or if they just got lazy and thought their patrons wouldn't notice! strange...
like i mentioned before, china makes for much more funny english and signage than hong kong.
it also seems that china makes for good food when you know where to go. my uncle brought us to his regular teppanyaki place. the chef simply put was very very skilled. i'm not sure i agree with her recommendations of which sauce to use on what meat, but the way she de-shelled those prawns had me amazed. needless to say, it's pretty cool watching people cook for you when their hands move so fast.
another night for dinner our uncle took us to "Seaport City Restaurant". now this place was just crazily amazing! i've never been to a restaurant like it before. firstly, we had our own room. and second, we had our own private bathroom. let's just say that it was very very very posh.
the other thing that i've realized this trip is that i think i'm an animals-right-ist at heart. prior to this trip, i usually could care less about what animal i'm eating because i think the food chain exists for a reason (i do however draw the line at dogs and cats). but over the past two weeks, every time we've eaten chicken (which by the way happens to my favorite edible animal), my heart churns because they always always ALWAYS put the head on the plate for display with the rest of the body! i really do think it's totally gross and just completely unnecessary. =(
chicken aside, seaport was so posh that if you wanted a seafood dish and wished to choose exactly which fish/crab/lobster/sea cucumber/snake/eel/prawn you wanted, you took the lift down to the ground floor and picked them straight out of the tank/tub. now the fish and the prawns i could deal with, but my goodness! i have never ever seen so many snakes ready to be eaten! there were cages and cages, and buckets full of them. it was totally rank! however, i must say that the prawns that my uncle chose were pretty huge, and not to mention, tasty! =p
okay moving on, shenzhen made for some good shopping experiences - especially for raph! it was hilarious, we went to a upmarket shopping center that day and for the most part we were just browsing as stuff was suprizingly expensive! we then wandered into Jack Jones, which seems to be a pretty good brand over here (it's somehow related to the brand, Only). now the salesgirls in this store were particularly leechy, and i had purposely made a bee line straight out of the store a few minutes earlier because one of the girls was seriously seriously stalking me. but anyhow, raph was trying on a few jackets here and there, and one salesgirls just totally got attached. but i've gotta say. she was just so good. and even though she spoke really little english, and we even less mandarin, we still managed to work our way around getting sizes and what not. single-handedly, she managed to up raph's purchase from just one jacket, to the jacket, shirt and vest! i know it doesn't sound like much, but when you consider that each item was pretty pricey, it was pretty skilled of her!
but what made the moment even "golder" was the fact that she ushered raph to the fitting room to try on all the merchandise. while waiting for him to dress up, rach and i ended up chatting to her. among other things, she asked us where we were from, whether we were working, how we related (p.s. she was totally suprized when we told her we were siblings - it must be the one child policy thing!), and then - whether or not raph had a girlfriend! she was totally excited and just really really cute. she helped raph to fold up his sleeves and she pretty much just told him straight out that the t-shirt he was wearing just wasn't good enough, and that he needed to walk out of the shop wearing the shirt from there! so of course, the moment warranted a snap!
cute huh?
the next day also saw another day trip to the city of guangzhou. we ended up leaving the house quite late today, so we didn't get much of a chance to do too much shopping once we were there. but our aunty took us to a pretty sweet market-y type bazaar in which we found some awesome bargains! i bought a bunch of jewelry and scarves =)
later on that night, we went on a night-cruise to see the lights of the city. while the bridges were pretty cool, it really just didn't compare to the other tours that i've been on - especially when you compare it to the east/hudson river in new york and pugent sound in seattle!
so that leg of our china trip ended on tuesday morning when mom, dad, rach and i took a ferry back to the HK airport in order to make our flight to shanghai. raph ended up taking a ferry back to HK to shop and party it up with friends there.
upon arriving in our hotel at shanghai, rach and i realized that there was seriously something suss about our hotel room. it seems to us, that this hotel, despite being awesomely located to everything touristy, is intentionally tailored for perverted travelers.
so not only does our room come equipped with a full packet of condoms, but it also has a hormonal supplement for dudes that need "assistance"! the funniest part of it is the descriptions on the back of the box. however, in fear for the young ones and innocent minds, i think it best not to post them up here! one other thing which adds to the perversion, is the fact that our shower has a half body mirror sitting right next to the shower head. =.= quoting from rach, it's probably of some assistance when hotel guests find themselves getting up to the heebie-geebies!
what i will post up here however for another laugh, is one page of the hotel's service directory. now there's only one instruction. click on the two photos below, and read it aloud to yourself:
and for an itemized description of the "list of artcles":
awesome english huh? honestly, as soon as i read it, i called my mum in her room, told her to flip to the page, and just started crying with laughter. i laughed so hard, my back started to hurt!
well that pretty much sums up my travels so far! =D
well i should be off, tomorrow has in store a day trip to hangzhou that happens to start at 6:30am! woohoo right? =.=
haha.
love,
pheebs.
