Yes, itsbeen almost another month since my last post. Was kinda busy with work and working out after that. That made me tired enough to just go home and straight to sleep soon after.
Well anyways, as the title of this post mentions, I went back to mainland China for the last 10 days of November. Here I shall recount what happened on Day 1.Pictures will be up on Facebook as soon as I'm done going editing and resizing them (almost 2,000 pics snapped!!!).
Ok. So after working late and packing the final pieces of clothing to be brought, i slept at about 2am. Woke up at 5.20am to take a quick shower and had a few bites of bread before heading to the airport. Our flight was 9am so we had to be there by about at least 7am. Reached theresafely with many bags to carry (i had to help carry my mum'sbag since she has lots of things to carry (u know women lar..., her bag was so full she had to "tumpang" some stuff in my bag as well). My luggage consisted of my backpack and a mid sized trolley bag. Brought my Ricoh camera (with its full gear: 3x 1Gb memory cards, spare batt, charger) along as well despite my sis bringing the newly bought Sony @300 (2x 4gb card, spare batt, zoom lens kit and charger) along.
Plane left on schedule and it took about 4 hours plus to reach Xiamen (SOuth west of CHina, Facing the straights of Taiwan. We flew by MAS on a Thursday, so there were plenty of empty seats in Economy. One passenger had the whole middle row to himself, so he slept across all 4 seats after lifting up the armrest. LOL!! Food served wasn't too bad, but I remember MAS serving better food. oh well, it comes with cost cutting i guess.
Watched Journey to the Centre of the Earth to kill timeas well as snapped pictures on the plane. On the flight was my family of4, my 5th aunt (GK), my last aunt(BK) and her daughter/ my cousin (HH).
Arrived at 2pm and once we got our stuff and cleared customs, wemet u with the tour co-ordinator. We had a connecting flight from Xiamen, Fujian Province to Nanchang, Jiangxi Province (more towards Central China) at 4.00pm. Here we joined up with the rest of the tour group (whom had arrived a day earlier and stayed one night in Xiamen). So in total there were 44 ppl on this tour(yes i was surprised at the huge amount of ppl).
It was here at the airport that they took away my Shokubutsu body shampoo!! I had forgotten that there was a bottle of it in my backpack and since i did not check it in, it was confiscated. Doh!!! silly me...
We flew on Xiamen Airlines, using their newly refurbished Boeing 777 (i think). THe seat and interior was spanking new. EVery 2 rows, there was an LCD monitor on top which displayed a map of china, and where the plane was flying towards.It even showed how fast the plane was going, temperature, and well as how many miles to reaching the destination. The flight to Nanchang was about 1.5 hours long. We arrived at 5.30pm and headed to the hotel in 2 buses. The temperature outside the airport was about 17 Celcius. It was freaking cold for me as i was wearing just a t shirt and a jacket. The sun sets earlier during winter and 6 6pm, its total darkness, like the 8pm in ouR country.
We jammed our way to our hotel. Nanchang city is split into 2 parts by a river. In fact the Jiangxi provice has lots of ultra huge lakes(some the size of a little sea) as it has pretty low flat lands. The riverside was done up nicely, with lots of lights and beautiful walkways. however, we stayed some distance away from the river. In fact, we were horrifed when the tour guide told us that the place we are staying in is 3 star and the 3 star hotels here are of worse quality than malaysia. We thought of the worst.
THen when we stopped at the place wewere staying, I was mortified... The name of the place was called Motel 168. MOTEL?!?!? Outrageous!!! But wait a minute, this motel is 15 storey high... Hmm.. something must give.ANyways, we had dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was 6pm and we were all cold and very hungry. Food served wasnt really tasty but nobody cared. Every1 just stuffed themselves silly. I, myself had 3 bowls of rice. YEs, the cold weather has an effect on people.
I then braced myself when we walked into our rooms for the night. But wait, the key used is a key card. And its a touch card system, something like touchn go. tap the card on the door and it opens... Hmm... very high tech. Turned ont he lights and the rooms were bad at all. Inf act, very much better than our 3 star hotels. It even had rain-style showers!!! Woohoo!! I couldnt wait to hit the showers!!. After our showers, we headed out to town for a walk since it was only 8pm. We only walked the streets nearby our hotel as we weren't very familiar with the place and we were freaking cold. we then discovered we were actually beside a train terminal and the train terminal in Nanchang is like what KL sentral is in malaysia. Its a transit point for most train travellers in the south west of China. There were plenty of cheap hotels or motels or just a place to bunk for the night all over town. there were lots of little food stores selling almnost the same thing; mixed rice. THere were also lots of provision stores around our place. We had supper of Xiu loong pau (soup dumplings) at a nearby restaurant before going back to the hotel. Watched some tv before going to sleep at about 12am. The bed here is damn hard... but who cares? I'm too tired anyways... Zzzz....
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