DAY 1 - 15 Nov 08
we flew off in the wee hours of the day from the budget terminal (yes, we took budget airline for this trip) on tiger airways and reach Macau airport sometime in the morning.
we wasted no time and made our way to the Venetian. the Venetian is the new super grand super big hotel cum casino cum shopping centre with a venetian theme (like duh) which was opened last year. after leaving our luggage at the counter we took the lift to the 3rd (?) floor where the shops were.
yup this is all indoors. they even have a "river" with boatsmen who sang if you paid them. but this place isn't really good for shopping because it only had all the high end boutiques (think ngee ann city but with even more boutiques which are very high end) so we had our lunch at the food court (which charged restaurant prices i might add), took a quick visit to the casino and left promptly. we then went to visited the local tourist attraction which is just the remaining wall of some old church. boring. didn't bother to take any photos. then we went back to collect our luggage and took a ferry to our next destination which was on mainland China, Zhu Hai (literally "pearl sea"). got there checked in, then went for our dinner. we went to some restaurant near the hotel. one of our uncles who travel to that area a lot for work starts acting like the boss and orders a lot of food. and it's all seafood. oysters, clams (more than 1 variety), roast pigeons, hairy crab and whatnot. it was a huuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggeeeeeeeee feast. so it was a good thing right? not really. thing is i hate being "force fed" and personally i had something against this particular uncle. i shan't divulge his evildoings here but if you are interested enough you can contact me personally ya. haha. anyway, so i gave him my signature "pissed look". of course he doesn't like it. but too bad. and hey, it's not like we are making him pick up the entire tab. bleah~ *sticks tongue out* after that we went to do a little shopping which was pretty rushed. shops there don't close too late so we went back to the hotel and called it a night.
DAY 2 - 16 Nov 08
being rather unfamiliar with the area we decided to join a day tour. we went to various places which i can't really remember so i'll just touch on the few more significant ones.
(WARNING! wall of text!)
we went to this tourist attraction which is a statue of a maiden with a pearl in her hands. according to legend she was a daughter of one of the 4 sea dragon kings and she particularly liked this region and came to bless the area. eventually she fell in love with a local fisherman. some evil witch in the area (somehow there are lots of such characters in the small region) got jealous of their love and told the fisherman that the maiden (who's supposedly some mermaid. with legs? i don't know) is not human and will revert to her evil spirit form if she takes off any of her 8 bangles (heavy leh). so the fisherman grew suspicious and asked her for a bangle in order to prove her love for him. she got very upset and told him she would die if she removed any of the bangles but the blockhead (don't expect too much from fishermen) insisted that she did. so, reluctantly she removed a bangle for him and true enough she died. the fisherman was devastated and distraught over his lost love. then the wise village head told him there is a way to revive her, which is to give her some revival herb from the mountains. the thing is, the herb was still too small and the fisherman had to take care of it and make it grow by watering it with some of his blood everyday. after many many many days the plant matured and he used it to revive his love (how come the corpse never decompose?) and she got revived as a normal girl, the prettiest in all Zhu Hai. one day while she was frolicking at the beach with some gal pals they found a humungous peral and she decided to offer it to the village head with gratitude, hence the statue with the pearl.
that was a super lengthy piece of folklore. when i was about to take a photo of this forementioned statue, busloads of pageant queens appeared! of course i'd take the real girls first right?
okok, the statue (finally):
after that we went to take a cable car up one of the mountains there.
a shot of the mountain scenary:
on the mountain stands a statue of the fisherman aka the mermaid's husband:
a nice view of the city from the mountain:
what's a trip to china like without some engrish?:
there was also this rock where couples would put locks that had their names engraved on. supposedly these couples will be blessed by the fisherman and the maiden (who are mortal? or eventually became dieties?):
after the day tour we went to do somemore shopping at the undeground shopping centre. some stuff can bargain while others were pretty much fixed price. we went for dinner at some japanese restaurant and "the boss" ordered tons of food again. i thought if i saw another fish i would have puked. and he made the statement "ah, we're eating fish so there's less meat than yesterday". what, since when is fish considered vegetables? what kind of retarded statement was that? *roll eyes* and it's not like we are not paying for it (ok technically my mum paid for my bro and me).
DAY 3 - 17 Nov 08
my mum arranged for some driver to bring all of us to He Shan (somewhere in Guang Zhou) to visit some distant relatives. the driver went on the highway and it took around 1hour to get there. mind you it's supposed to be a rural part of china.
not as shabby as i would expect though. they grew rice in the region and it was harvesting season. they lay all their freshly threshed grains on the roads (where cars drive over them and people just trample on them) for them to be dried out by the sun:
some people in the fields (the one in blue is actually some distant relative of mine. hmmm...fortunately i don't see any resemblence):
a water buffalo in the fields:
ok, i dub this village "the village of sleeping dogs" because whenever you turned your head, there would be a sleeping dog in the alley. amazing.
we went back to Zhu Hai after dinner there (another hour of traveling. ugh. toilet~~) went back to the hotel and just slept. (apparently some air of resentment was brewing but it didn't involve me. don't care. sleep.)
DAY 4 - 18 Nov 08
the morning started with something going on between my aunts and my mum. don't really get them la. it's hard to tell why 3 women hitting menopause get cross with each other.
we took a ferry to Hong Kong (finally). some confusion with the HK cabbie caused more unhappiness in the air between the 3 women. we checked in, wasted no time had a very decent lunch at those HK style cafes (i had roast goose rice. it tasted pretty much like duck.) and took the MTR (not MRT) to this Nv Ren Jie (literally "woman street"). it's pretty much like bugis street style but they sell totally random things from fake prada to doraemon underwear.
after that, for some reason, things got really ugly between my aunts and my mum and they started seriously PMS-ing each other. hey, how u expect a guy to shop when caught in the middle of 3 PMS-ing women? (ok it's more like my 2 aunts vs my mum)
then my mum insisted on taking the MTR to take some escalators to some mountain. with unhappiness still in the air we took the train and got to the station. after around 20 minutes of going up one escalator after another we reached the end of the escalators which was at the mountain mid-level. it was a truly stunning view
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...of course we were stunned. there was NOTHING! talk about a total disappointment. needless to say this brought the bad atmosphere up one notch and we cabbed to the mountain top.
managed to get a nice mountain view of HK at night:
after that we took the tram down the mountain which wasn't fantastic either because we moved backwards. (bad atmosphere up up up) after that my mum insisted we went to catch the laser show and the walk of fame. but by the time we reached there it was too late (needless to say you know things are getting beyond nasty). did get a nice river view though:
a statue of Bruce Lee:
Jackie Chan's handprints:
we had macs for dinner. i really wanted to get a pair of jeans i saw which i couldn't get because they were PMS-ing so i started giving my signature pissed look and made a lot of noise (heh heh 3 PMS-ing aunties + 1 cranky guy) surprisingly my 2 aunts offered to go back to Mong Kok (where Nv Ren Jie was) with me so i could get my jeans from one of the shops (no, not from the roadside stalls). i think they just wanted to get away from my mum. the great thing about HK is that shops don't close even at 1130pm! and it was a weekday! so my mum dragged my bro along with her to wherever her planned adventures led her. went back to the hotel and slept.
FINAL DAY - 19 Nov 08
this is the day we went to Disneyland! woohoo~ we cabbed there with all our luggage.
some bridge on the way:
i see disneyland!:
when we got there, my mum went to settle the tickets while my aunts settles the luggage. do i even have to mention how totally mundane things trigger off PMS-ing women?
the tickets!
so we went in and took the rides and watched some shows. it was quite a lot of fun.
high school musical HK style:
my bro's pizza:
my seafood baked rice:
some attractions:
*
*we got some souvenirs and went out only to find my aunts already waiting outside. we got kinda lost along the way and apparently they've been waiting for about an hour for us. honestly they were way too early (even the 3rd, non-PMS-ing aunt said so). regardless, this is the final straw. the 3 women just shouted at each other all the way to the airport (poor cabbie). after that, my aunts just stopped talking to my mum completely. they are still currently not talking to my mum. haha. God knows when their menopause will end. but i definitely made it a point not to get affected by their bad atmosphere. expenses paid trip with lots of buys. nothing much to complain about. (other than the stupid uncle. fortunately not related to him by blood, he's the 3rd aunt's husband. ugh.)
i decided that if i included the stuff i bought, this post would be way too long. so i decided to split up the shopping and the sightseeing into 2. hence the "sightseeing version". look foward to the alternate version! until then, bye~
