days 11,12,13,14,15

all spent in shanghai...and i love shanghai ONLY because...i get to visit my taiwanese friends!!!! (havent seen them for like 5 years!)and i get to do what I LOVE - taekwondo!! i taught in their TKD schools for a couple of days!END OF CHINA TRIP! not coming back again for at least another 3 years!!! :)

days 9 and 10 - hangzhou

gosh... hangzhou was so... BORINGGG. westlake's like the only attraction there. just like that, you go there in the day..and stay there till sunset...

sigh... and we did that for.. 2 days.

next stop: shanghai!

still at day 8 i guess?? - last night in beijing!

alright i lost count...

went out with EC in the day and met up with the remaining gang at night. we just had to take a few photos near the Olympic Aquatic Center and Stadium (commonly known as the Bird's Nest)i never dared dream of going to the Olympics.. i probably would have made it to the Olympics if i wasn't trained in Singapore? hmm.. still, it's far beyond my imagination. although i did dreamed that i can represent Singapore in the Asian Games it was achieavable if i hadn't left the national team..hmm..met up with XX to have our last dinner in Beijing, and walahh.. it was HOTPOT like AGAIN. gosh, i swear i'm not going to eat another hotpot until next Chinese New Year lor.this t-shirt is one of the coolest buy it was just 15 RMB! walau!!!of course must sing "One Night in Beijing" lah... next up, Hangzhou and Shanghai... then i am so done with China. heh.

day 8 - nanluo guxiang

i must have mixed up all the sequences of my trip! promised to blog regularly throughout the trip but too bad we didnt have a card reader which can read our 8GB cards. (scary huh technology? for a while we were all at 128MB cards..!) this is like an arty farty lane with speciality shops and chillout cafes. i really like modern Chinese Art. it captivates me, maybe because i sort of could relate to them.
it's a good place to spend a lazy afternoon there, having brunch in a chillout cafe before going around the small little shops, there's something for everyone there.

day 7 - peking ducking away

i swear by Da Dong. seriously it's delicious. albeit pricey, even by Singapore standards, it's worth every cent. they have a open concept kitchen where you can see the chefs waiting in line for the ducks to be ready so that they can serve it to the clients.it gets really busy even on weeknights so reservations are always encouraged. sipping on red/white wine before dinner whilst waiting for a table is really cool!!we had a good chat and some decent wine before dinner, definitely made the wait much easier.before long, we ordered our dishes and trust me, with this bunch of mates, we ALWAYS over order. but then again, maybe i'm the bad influence here??dude, we ordered like two freaking Peking Ducks. not one but TWO! plus like 10 other dishes. (ok not ten, but close. haha) i really like to eat with them. they make the food taste much more delicious than it already is.

day 5 - beijing

we're finally back to city life!! i think we are city kids afterall (except for YF whom can really live in the mountains with the tibetian yaks) the moment we touched down we invaded EC's house, EC actually had to seek refuge in a friend's place so that me and my friends can have the apartment to ourselves. hee hee. the first night was spent cooking Hainanese Chicken Rice for XX!food looks decent but it didnt taste as good as it should be! i blame it on the poor utensils and kitchenwares =Pnonetheless, i think XX was still happy to be eating homecooked food after leaving Singapore for so long!i forgot if it was the next day or the day after when we went to The Great Wall. almost didnt want to go this time, because it was almost exactly a year ago when i visited the same place.but the thought of being in the same picture as the rest of the team... gave me the motivation to be there! hee heeit was such a coincidence that our team t-shirts are always red in colour. this trip is definitely one of the most memorable trips in my life!can you tell that we're trying to tell you it's 2008? heh.. there were lots of Chinese tourists happily helping us take our group photos because we were wearing Team China Olympic jerseys! some of them even took a photo of us! i thought it was so cool but the rest thought it was lame -__-"

all around lijiang old town

all in all, it's a nice cool little town to visit. it's pretty amazing that the roads we were stepping on were actual roads which existed thousands of years ago.this was taken at the balcony outside our room in our first innhow our inn looks like from the outside.. this inn was made famous because of a chinese drama called 一米阳光we walked past this breakfast stall each morning.. but didnt buy anything from her haha.. she was selling soya milk with this local pastry called the "Ba-Ba" which tastes..hm....let's just say, there's a reason why we didnt buy anything.this was taken at the entrance of our second inn which simply rocks!! very very comfortable for just 200 Yuan a night, twin sharing.tibetian style cafe, very cosy, drinks were good but expensive. one hot chocolate costs SGD6, that's crazy.

day 4 - shangrila national park

yeap, it was minus 5 degrees!!! and we were all super under-dressed. our commando style tour guide "commanded" us to rent trench coats from a local store - which turned out to be the best decision we've made!it got sliiightly better when the sun came, but still.. COLDDDDat least this tibetian yak looks so much bigger and able to withstand my weight! lol!ok the bad thing about the trench coat is that we end up looking like bak zhang (meat dumplings) and we're the same colourfinally time to head back to lijiang from shangrila.. it was a very pleasant ride back and i quite enjoyed the "excursion" style of touring a place once in a while.. but of course the highlight of this trip was still our commando style tour guide... i love her!!!