Wednesday, November 24, 2004

you might have lost that loungin' feeling

Its been only 3 days since i got back from the Jiangnan trip and i'm starting to feel a wee bit of holiday blues already... It was lots of fun!

Got a good start when we went to see Shanghai by night. Took lots of nice pics of the colonial buildings and dong fang ming zhu all nicely lit up. Even though it was raining, it was still way too exciting for our spirits to be dampened.

First 4 days was all sightseeing in shanghai, wuxi and hang zhou. Hang zhou was especially beautiful. We had some sightseeing in su zhou too. It felt like we took a lot of boats and ships and saw many temples and their bells and saw a lot of product presentation things at places like the silk factory, the pearl place, the long jing cha place, the teapot place and i could go on and on and by the time we got to that funny goodluck marble lion thing place on the last day i think a lot of people were quite sick of hearing people trying to sell us stuff already. It was nice at first though. The long jing cha place was the best. We got to visit the Su Zhou industrial park as well where we saw what the factories look like, for example Gul Tech., and the Singaporeans working there told us about what life's like for them. Quite good actually. The housing estates there look exactly like what you'd see in singapore.

Food there was quite strange sometimes. But we really had a LOT to eat for all three meals.
We did quite a lot of shopping as well. At Nanjing Road, at the little shops outside Han Shan Si, at Bu Xing Jie and the He Nan Nan Lu place on the last day. Found that the best stuff to buy there is food ( as in candy, chips, jelly... haha), clothes and CDs. For CDs the number on the price tag is about the same, but since it's in rmb over there it really is alot cheaper. So the Usher CD i got was only about S$3-4 . Hurrah!

We spent a lot of time on the road though. Did lots of crazy stuff haha. Ate alot and sang "When you say nothing at all" alot. But i couldnt sing "Angels" with xi2 and jukhuan cos i dont know the words. hahaha. The most productive things done on the bus were listening to xiao xu jie jie (when i wasn't asleep. waha) and memorising Man Jiang Hong and Chao Tou Feng with jukhuan. (xi2 was sleeping. hahaha)

Last night in Su Zhou was the performance of the group thing we spent the nights and some afternoons in su zhou practicing. Dance turned out quite ok. haha. relief. On a whole the show was really good. Hurrah for everyone!! ((:

It was really nice to have a stress-free learning environment. Well, almost stress-free. Learnt a lot about chinese culture. (I appreciate it a lot more now =D) And we learnt about being more street-smart as well. because of the bargaining (power to us. yea man!) taking care of yourself and making sure your stuff or money doesn't get stolen.

Had so much fun and made lots of new friends too. Will miss being overseas, and especially all the wonderful people i met. i won't forget you! thanks for such a great time..

Aaah was such a good experience. It's good to be home though. missed everyone here. (=
Will miss lots of things about the trip as well though. Shall talk about it later.
Now i have to make gran's birthday card. haha.

God bless and happy holidays everyone (:

Posted by mic at 10:30 PM