Well…. if you haven’t read my travelog in China, here u go… Dipsotravellogy.
Or else, here’s a pic view of the whole trip….
My room! Hmmmm nothing much but a nice room with a great buddy like Mr. Tan (regardless of what he thinks of me… haha) and Ms. Tan who was so well equipped with her IKEA cloth to clean up the place. Haha… she’s a clean freak! Hahah… and Mr. Tan well… he needs some improvement!
First weekend, one of the MILLION times we went to Nanjing East Rd. Now I really hate the place but it’s damn nice to see the bund from the Pu Si side to the Pu Dong side. Oh we got ourselves a boiler cuz we were tired of buying bottles and bottles of water at a time. And Mr. Tan got a mitochondria while handling it.. hehe… OUCH!
First grocery shopping! Kinda sad when we realized that we didn’t have time to go to HK. And Mr. Tan’s favorite chicken’s backside hair that keeps popping up! Haha.. I felt a bit retarded but love my company… it’s always all or none for That 70’s show! I’m SO glad Li Che invested in an external hard disk. It was truly God sent in the entertainment business… we had it all covered!
The next weekend we took a trip to the lab and back to get work done and I took a pic of this place that I love the most in SJTU – the Parthenon. SJTU also has Jamun like looking grass… I’m amazed at the effort they make to deco the place up! Expensive too I guess…
Aaah! Kok Vui! I finally met the Panda there and he brought us around to Shanghai Old Town (near Yu Yuan) and Xin Tian Di for a try to be but not so crazy night – cuz Li Che and me were totally NOT geared up with school bags in a club.. sheesh! Embarrassing haha…
Next Friday was my presentation and I wore the nice shirt my friends bought for me on my birthday! Hmmm…. My prof liked it too… haha.. Zara! WOW! The evening we went to a BBQ place for dinner with the Singapore friends we had bumped into the week before and it was great eating and eating and eating till we got our money’s worth! YUM! Hahah… we also were so full we had a sleepless night! That was for Li Che and me… Kelvin, was clubbing away! Hmmmm…
The next day was the torch relay in my school! Wow! Again I felt like I was a part of a historical occasion…. The first one was the turn of the millennium. Sheesh… sounds geeky… nvm.
Thanks to Joanne, we went for a really really nice concert by an American School Band and it was WOW!!! The best part was that the school funded the tickets and it was free… hmmmm lotsa support for the Arts.
Weekend 3! Time to play again! This time around we went for dinner and supper with Weiming and Fiona. Weiming is a Singaporean but a perm student at SJTU and Fiona is a fren from my lab (a student under my prof). Weiming brought us to this place called Whisk… the brownie was AWESOME! I miss the marmalade pantry!
Amazingly, Saturday was spent sleeping away after the Singapore Day at the SH Singapore School funfare organized by NUS NOC! Haha… I loved playing like a kid again although it was a little embarrassing at first to be like a kid… but who cares! I have this sticker thingie that you add coloured powder over and colour the car.. haha.. loved it!
After sleeping like pigs for half the Saturday and Sunday, we went to the SH museum and boy were we sad cuz it was crowded. Believe it or not, we had recce-ed the place the night before… at about 2am!
Weekend 4! After getting sick and tired of the internet’s slow speeds and sleeping, I went for a walk around the school and snapping away at everything that I saw! The school is bloody HUGE and very beautifully laid out not crammed into a small corner of the place. Well… the city is 10 times bigger too!
Suzhou… it’s a really nice place to visit for a day trip and walk around the Pagoda and the Gardens. Joanne and Liyang kept us company with their tips and crap jokes (Liyang that is) besides all the little bits of info on Chinese heritage and culture. Besides being a trip it was a learning experience for me! =)
Xi Tang. Not many people know the name but it’s the place where the last scenes of MI:III was shot. It is so gorgeous… all the little lanes and the rivers and the houses. It feels like that part of the town has not been touched by outside life… except the fact that every house has a laptop.
I went sightseeing with Fiona to the Pu Dong side but ended up shopping… haha… nvm. I loved watching the dude who was carving out pics on granite… so cool! But damn ex!
Hmmm… this dinner was SO scandalous, I will never forget… all gossips out! Haha…. And I will not say too!
Jane turned up at SH with her friend Aikra and finally, I got to try the ‘famous’ Xiao Long Pao at Shanghai Old Town (Shanghai Lao Jie). After that we fired away on the cameras and wow… it ended with the BEST egg tarts in the world! Haha…
It was also the weekend my level-mate Monaf from Syria went back home after exams! One day, I will go to Damascus… probably when I go to Egypt. He told me so much about it, it sounds magical!
Self touring!
After many days of contemplation, I set out on my own in SH to look around the place and met up with Jane/Kelvin but the whole day was just walking around and covering places on Lonely Planet! Really saw some amazing stuff…
Beijing! Finally, we set out on our Supertrip to Beijing to see the places we’ve only seen in pictured and read in stories. The COOLEST part was that our hotel was at the Hu Tongs… living at Md. Sultan… imagine THAT!
Great Wall… well nothing like getting down and dirty to see the Wall the way it was supposed to be. Not glamorous, but historically untouched. That’s a wonder. No 2 on my and Kelvin’s list of wonders. First for Li Che… first trek for her too! Amazing she did it despite whacking her knee pretty bad.
First for me was climbing up more than 10km in all stairs. Almost seeped out of money and strength, Huangshan was what they claimed it to be… Hell for the body but Heaven to the eyes. I’m so thankful I suffered all the way up there cuz the views are simply exhilarating… to top it all off, I was with Mr. Tan who proved to be the bestest buddy I could ask for. He’s a champ!
Hangzhou. Many have said about Si Hu (West Lake) but unless u see it for yourself and take the boat ride, you never experience peace till you’re there. It was so calm and quit and the views so amazingly beautiful in the day I can only wonder how it looks at night. Speaking of night, China has one of the best sunset colours I’ve seen in my life. The sights even on the bus blazing away at 150kmph are nothing short of breathtaking…
And so it ended, 85 days of brilliant experience that I am only glad I went for although I spend almost 4k, I think it wall all worth it… living in a foreign land where I don’t speak much of the language yet I enjoyed myself to the fullest…
Of course its not all the experience… there are too many pics and too much to say here. But all I can say is that this trip was FANTABULOUS!
