Where did i go?
My family went to Xiamen for a respite when tours everywhere were fully booked because we didnt plan our trip earlier. Interestingly, my dad chose Xiamen cos he was curious abt this city after we transit at its international airport last yr!
I love window seats but the downside of it is
(1) Sometimes the windows get real hot if it's facing the sun and it burns!
(2) It's very inconvenient to go to toilet
Have u seen distinct beams of sunlight peeking out between clouds? It's a lovely sight i've seen but not lucky enough to capture it on camera :) I think the 1st picture has a bit of the effect if u look closely.
Our first destination upon arrival was the temple. It's supposed to be famous in history.. but i cant rmbr the story :( If u look closely at the picture immediately above, there's the sun beam out from cloud thing again :)
My parents were posing in between 2 lion statues. Interestingly, one has its mouth opened and the other is closed. Apparently, they both are laughing, one is hahaha-ing, the other is heehehee-ing :)
Food! (clockwise) Baby squid, fuzhou fishballs that were really good, their siew mai and bingtang hulu :) I was so happy to see the assorted fruit bingtang hulu.. cos i dont like the real bintang hulu :)
Food above were from the night market:) There were really all kinds of food, but my tummy had limited space to try only some of them :) My dad really likes the fuzhou fishballs :) So much tt he bought 2 bowls!
Top right photo shows some people cleaning a big ball which u can go inside and walk on water as the ball floats :) Pretty interesting!
Those of u who received all sorts of bings from me.. Most of them has "gu lang yu" 鼓浪屿 on the box. It's quite a pretty island next to xiamen, pretty much an equivalent to our sentosa. The biggest difference is the only form of transport there is by ferry and no vehicles are allowed on the island. In fact, there are only TWO cars on the island. The rubbish collecting car and firemen car.
The island is famous for it's music school, the famous musicans they've produced and also it was previously chosen to build embassies of numerous countries before world war II :) I enjoyed the Piano Museum the most! I've never seen so many priceless antique pianos and collectibles at one place before! Unfortunately... photos were not allowed. There was even this piano u can play by paddling with your feet :) Cool right?
Oh.. i have to mention tt i really like the ball-shaped bush! :)
I like these close-up shots of flowers with my trusty fujifilm F40fd. :)
海阔天空 stone. Good reminder for everyone!
Free roaming chickens! The tour guide found it hilarious when my parents told them that kids in singapore only see featherless chicken, either in supermarket or on the dinning table :)
The usual oleaginous food in China. I wonder if metabolic syndrome will catch up with their population in a few years! On a whole, i thought the food was OK. Not fantastic, nothing special too.
When i saw the road name fuxing lu, i got reminded of kristy :)
Interesting bread i saw at Walmart :) They sell durains too! But these durains are genetically modified to be 'odourless', so the locals enjoy it for the sweetness and texture :)
I know wenhui likes hay-po, which is also called slipper prawns (wenhui, did i rmbr correctly?) But these hay-po look alikes are called hay-gu. So one is 虾婆 and one is 虾姑.. supposed they're related?
The bottom right pic is live abalone :)
We ate one of our lunches in a food court. I asked my dad recently and he said that it is only in SEA tt we have the concept of kopitiam and foodcourt prob originated from sg. Wonder if it is possible to 'patent' this idea.
Dont you think the idea of several vendors in a shopspace is a good idea? Families eating together can eat a variety of things, unlike the cafes overseas where there is only 1 menu :) Well, unles the cafe offers a wide variety of choices. :)
Before we headed for the airport, the driver drove us to the beach. They have our equivalent of our ECP :)
My mom was insanely interested in this leafless tree and told me to take so many shots of it :)
Homeward Bound
I enjoyed the night flight back home cos i could see so many pretty stars. Belt of Orion actually looked closer too:) It was a pretty sight but my camera was too chui to capture it. Also, the plastic window had reflection of the passenger in my row who had their night lights on :(
Btw, Singapore looks really pretty from air at night. I took a video, but the battery died and my camera didnt save the video! :(:(
My account of this trip seems rather short, cos there was really nothing that i was terribly excited about. It was just nice to spend a few days walking around a foreign place.
Something that was a pleasant surprise about this trip was how the tour group was made up of my family and my family alone only. I've never been on a guided tour in such small numbers. It was interesting how we travelled around in a family car. The downside however is how the tour guide kept 'forcing' us to buy their products as there was no one else we could direct their sales attention too!
Most interestingly, we were driven to a company that sells fish oil. You wont believed what i'm about to tell you... Ok, first we were told that the fish oil made in China is better in quality than fish oil produced elsewhere in the world including USA, Norway and Australia. Then they said that styrofoam which we use to do our primary school projects is chemically similar in structure to the atheromas in our arteries. They then broke pieces of styrofoam in wine glasses and squeezed capsules of fish oil produced by different countries into them.
Do you know? The made-in-China fish oil dissolved the styrofoam right before our eyes. I really wonder if the experiment would increase their sales. Cos from the people i've already surveyed locally so far, all of them think that the fish capsules they're selling sounds corrosive and would not try it. Also, they also marketed the efficacy of their product by adding that their product is so effective in removing the 'debris' in ur blood vessels that u only need to take in once in 5 years. Unbelievable not?
Y'know, i couldnt help but think of UHU glue through out their presentation, cos i rmbr my group members burning holes in syrofoams in pri sch when they applied too much of it on styrofoams.
Of course, my family did not buy the fish oil. It was terrifying to imagine the kind of damange the fish oil could potentially cause!
I heard from Wanzhen that she went to a Hotspring in Taiwan. My family went for one too! The water was insanely hot though and most people there looked like steamed lobsters :) Instead of finding the hotspring shiok, i felt super hypotensive probably from all the vasodilation. I felt fainty! My mom enjoyed herself thoroughly though, cos she went from one hotspring to the other continuously, trying different types. She liked the herbal, zesty lemon and milk bath, but there was also curry, coffee and pineapple bath :)
Before i end this post, i should also post 2 videos.
My mom likes the Xiamen airport toilet cos their toilet seats are covered by a layer of plastic which u're supposed to press a button to replace before each use. It seems more hygenic but how if the plastic is recycled continuously? :) No one would know right?
Check out the English instruction. I thought 'colourful button' sounds quite amusing :)
Crab fight! My dad and i was spotted a very angsty crab and we were trying to disturb him in the video :) [edit: There seems to be a prob with youtube.. my video is missing!]
Last but not least, my favourite photo :) Pretty yellow flower.
