West Lake, Six Harmonies Pagoda, Tiger Spring and Song City in Hangzhou

We were back to Hangzhou on the third day and going to spend the rest of our vacation days in Hangzhou. We stayed nearby West Lake (Xi hu) about 10 minutes walk from hotel to the lake. The first thing we did once we refreshed after check-in hotel was to walk to the lake. The weather was pretty good that morning. West Lake is about 5.68 square km and 1.5m average depth, a beautiful lake compared to Xi Zi, the most beautiful woman in ancient China as described by poet Su Dongpo from Song dynasty.

In picture below, I stood on the map of Hangzhou with the details on each bridge and exit/entrace to this city.If I was a general in ancient China, this map is very useful in war :)

Then we walked about 30 minutes to Tiger Spring (Hupao spring). This place is famous for its spring water also known as third best spring in China. It produces excellent natural mineral water and is also the burial place of monk Jigong.

Then we walked again. This time we went to Six Harmonies Pagoda. To enter the pagoda, we had to pay 2 times of entrance fee. One to get into the area, another one to enter the pagoda. The pagoda is made of wood and brick, plus the staircase is very narrow. I had hard time climbing the staircase due to my knee problem. The guard spat in the pagoda. Basically everyone in China spits. Yucks.

We quickly grabbed a cab and rushed to Song city before it gets dark. Song City is an imitation city build on a land similar to ancient China days.

There was a girl on the stage performing in the super cold weather. Salute.

The streets with shops and stalls.

Puppet show. Song city is like a theme park. The guys all went into haunted house and came back laughing. I don't know what happened in there.

Road side performance, just like in movies.

The Buddha statue. There is a shallow tunnel below the statue. People can go in there and experience some swirlings wall making one dizzy.

We purchased the ticket to watch the prestigious Song city show. We got the RMB220 seat which is equivalent to RM110.

It has five different performances. First is Song dynasty performances in the castle.

Then we watched Yue Fei's legend. Everything was in 3D. We got real horses in the battle in front of us and arrows archered from top and also cannons.

Hangzhou is famous for its Long Jing tea. The next show was on the tea dance and some Korea. Indian cultural dances too.

West Lake.

Last but not least we watched the green and white snake legend show. I didnt take any photos on this performance because I took a video. They made it rain in the arena on the part where they showed white snake flooded the fountain. Anyway, the show was nice and worth the price. Maybe for only once. :) I learnt some Chinese history from this trip seriously, like who is Yue Fei, the white and green snake, West Lake, who is Su Dongpo and some others.

Shanghai Bund, Pearl Oriental tower & YuYuan

I came back from 6D5N trip to Shanghai and Hangzhou. It was winter time so the air was dry and very cold. It reached -3 celcius the day I arrived in Shanghai.

Goodbye Malaysia, a must take photo in front of Air AsiaX plane. We arrived in Hangzhou at about 1.30pm, taking the train straight to Shanghai and checked in hotel at about 7pm. It was a really long journey taking up one whole day. Quickly we grabbed out winter coats and jackets and rushed out to experience winter. It was too cold unbearable and the temperature dropped even worse after dinner. There were construction everywhere, kinda spoil the view along Shanghai Bund overlooking the city. We walked along Shanghai Bund for some one hour and rushed back into hotel to rest, preparing for next day.

The next moring, we checked out any shops nearby that sell breakfast. It was too early that restaurants were still closed. It was winter, so the day started earlier. End up, we bought some meat paos from this shop. Overall the pork was really sweet. Some said too salty, anyway I loved it.

We saw some groups of people doing tai chi along the road or under roof or next to a building. There was something I didn't manage to snap which is the Chinese loves playing badminton. We saw many people playing badminton in heavy winter jackets, at town, or during hiking in a park.

Somewhere nearby Yuyuan (Yu garden) , lots of gold jewellery shops along the road.

2010 is Tiger year. They already started setting up this tiger statue from Pepsi cans.

Next we went to City Temple. They collected fees for us just to go in take picture. It was not cheap either. The place was so small hardly a size of 6 badminton courts, and tourists were not allowed to go upstairs. Everywhere in Shanghai and Hangzhou need $.

We simply took picture of anything to make full use of the entrace fee.

We walked around Yu Yuan market for a while. They were selling expensive stuff overprice for tourists there.

We queued up for quite sometime for seats in this restaurant. The higher floor you go, the higher minimun expense you have to spend on the food. We went to this floor which required us to spend at least RMB60 per person. The xiao long pao is very expensive on this floor compared to below where crowds were queuing up to eat in the cold weather.

nah. This is the shop name. See from the tissue packaging?

We tried some cold and hot dishes and 4 baskets of xiao long pao. They were divine sweet xiao long pao. Juice splitting into our spoon, each bites spelt heaven. We spent over RMB360 for 6 people.


At Yuyuan Garden entrance. 30 yuan each i think the fee.

Some pictures taken inside the garden (1)

Some pictures taken inside the garden (2)

Remember the famous Pearl Oriental tower in Shanghai?

At first we wanted to go up the tower but it cost over RM100 to get up there. No point if we go to half the tower right? So we decided a smarter way. If we want to see the tower, we should not be in the tower. That's why we took the cruise along the Huangpu river which cost us I cant remember is rmb70 or RM70. In this way, we can view both sides of the river, we can see the city and the bund.

That's the end of second day from my trip in Shanghai. I am suffering from flu right now due to the coldness back there.

A healthy and happy year for everyone I love

In 1 litre of tear series, Asou-kun asked Aya-san to the zoo. Wee Liem was happy to acknowledge that guys like to visit the zoo. So does he. He watched the series with me.

In one of the weekend where we went down to Taiping to attend wedding reception, he made a plan to visit Taiping zoo in the day. It is somewhat his dream to visit Taiping zoo. He is one of those kids who love to watch National Geographic and animal encylopedias.

I was pretty amazed of the many animals there compared to Zoo Negara where I have been twice in my childhood days. I hate Zoo Negara because once I got lost and separated from my family when I was too concentrate in watching the tigers, they left without me. I was crying and walking alone until my dad found and came running after me. Thank God I was still at the tiger place that made it easy for my dad to search for me. And the place stinks. And too few animals. But it has KFC unlike Taiping zoo, there have no food chains in there.


This picture of the ostrich upper body which WeeLiem giggled so much while taking it. He found it funny to just photograph the neck and head of this animal who lost so much feathers. His body was so poor 30 percent bald.


It is starting of the year 2010. A new decade. I am not going to write any new resolution this year because I won't be looking much into them either. It is just some black and white objectives that we want to achieve, but if I already know what I want to have, I don't have to write it down. It Is In My Head.

This is most probably more appropiate if I make this wish in Chinese New Year but I want to make it early. I wish for a healthy year for my family and myself. I wish everyone I love is happy all the times, a prosperous year ahead.

Happy New Year 2010 !!!

Only photo taken from PDC beach blast. Happy New Year !!!

Awal Muharam long weekend

It was some continuous long weekends in Selangor from 2 weeks back till 2 weeks later. They had Sultan birthday, Awal Muharam, gonna have Christmas and New year holidays.

I went home for some personal matters, at the same time to attend Pei Li's bride side wedding reception. I missed Alan's house warming. I already missed Her Hau's one in October. Sad.

Anyway, things happening at home both cheered me up and brought me down. It has been months since Celine's birthday I last saw the two babies. Both had grown so much. Celine is walking now, like a man walking on stick balancing herself using her legs. Cheryl has become a big sister answering everyone's question confidently. She can recognise all A-Z, reciting after us and spotting some common animals pretty amazing for a two year old plus. This is what happen when she has a highly educated mommy at home coaching her in everything.

3 pretty ladies. Ops, babies. That's baby sucking her yummy thumb all the times

I cannot make it for Pei Li's official chinese marriage ceremony this weekend as I have other programme to attend. Year end is always busy period for everyone. I rushed to her wedding in time to help at the reception desk after the long journey back from visiting sister. Aileng said I looked tired though which is very true. Above photo is compiled from Aileng's camera and 2 below were stolen from Shiao Shuan's facebook. I have to do so as I don't have any photo with bride in it.

Another table of our friends.

Bride and groom with friends at KEC.

Kaya spread

I'd done many things but there is one particular task that I have not done before. I made my own kaya spread last weekend. It is not any new thing in my family because my mom used to make our own kaya spread since I was a kid but it was my first try. I followed my mom's random instruction and ingredients like 2 bowls of sugar with 3 eggs and coconut milk with portion less than one coconut. So end up I had to pour everything into pot and reheat and adding in much more coconut milk because the spread still grainy of sugar texture after it was cooled down. I know the concept of try and error so I didn't whine. It turned out pretty okay and I absolutely love this morning breakfast.

I recover from Cullen's fever, normal now

Time flies, realizing I have not write anything regarding my birthday yet. I had just came back from watching twilight new moon. Ed Cullen looks like a corpse when he was topless. He had the worst freezing cold body comparing to muscular 108 degree Jake Black. His acting skill was awfully in shame that he is lucky he was filmed in good looking way by the movie director or else no millions of girls will be melting over the romanticness in the scenes. I sincerely prefer Twilight to New Moon. Anyway the movie is still great if it doesn't hang at the ending like this one. I would not grade it as bad movie because I love the story. I finished reading all four books, so I already knew what will happen in the next two movies. Not sure why, there were a lot mosquitoes in the cinema today. I had a few mosquitoe bites on my elbow, thigh and back. I was scratching a lot which caused discomfort, GSC should look into this problem.

Anyway back to my birthday celebration, I had a simple one with weeliem and it was the best among past years because at last I got a necklace that I had longed for years. I don't mind what necklace it is as long as it is a necklace, so it is a good gift. I received presents from sweetie herhau and xwei too , a birthday lunch with the usual lunch gang and many birthday wishes. I don't remember what was my birthday wish already at this moment, anyway there is no point of remembering because my wish never came true before.

I made a carrot cake on weeliem's birthday also to accomplish my dream of making one when I have my own oven. I made it although it was not a perfect one, with too moistured texture. Next time, I will surely remember to heat up the oven first before putting in the batter for bake and lesser cinnamon ground. I don't fancy strong cinnamon taste, so I have to reduce the mix on my next try. Practise makes perfect. I took the cake to office and force my pity friends and colleagues to try. I hope it doesn't taste too bad. I would like to make use of the stand mixer weeliem got me, cookies maybe?

My first sewing machine

2nd big thing I got for myself this year. Finally I managed to test it out after 2 weeks laying in the room, and yay! It is working fine. I have to find myself some time to go out and buy material and sew something before end of 2009.

Yam rice

Mom gave me yam last weekend and I made yam rice out of it. I tried not to have direct contact with the inner side of yam at all because I don't want to itch all night long. WL helped me to chop the yam into pieces and I cut them into smaller cubes without touching them with my hand. I don't want the rice to be dark black colour so I added only drop of dark soy sauce. I love today's dinner though it was my first try making yam rice.

Steamboat for 3

My sister is here over the weekend. It gave us excuse to have a small steamboat treat.

Pumpkin Patch

Random pictures from pumpkin patch that I visited in short hour back in Hillsboro.
Pumpkins everywhere. It was a happy colour.

Animal barn visit

More pumpkins. Pick your favourite shapes for Halloween, weigh and pay.

Barn ride. We were seated on hay stack, pulled by this green tractor

Images by me, Oregon Coast