E V E R Y D A Y . B E A U T I F U L . P U R P O S E F U L
July 22, 2011 Leave a comment
A man-made sandy beach pool at Sentosa’s HardRock Hotel, this is possibly Singapore’s cleanest, whitest beach. Fine sand bed and crystal-clear water, this is one great beach to swim and relax!
July 22, 2011 Leave a comment
(Photo Taken: Shadow of my flight on SQ from Jakarta to Singapore – It looks like a giant fish in the ocean…a giant bird over the forest.)
July 12, 2011 Leave a comment
(Photo Taken: An outdoor game tent at Drum Tower Street, Tianjin, China – Toss and ring your winnings! Unless you are the lord of the rings, this simple-looking game is not going to yield big winnings. But it does bring laughter and the “good-old-days” atmosphere.)
July 12, 2011 Leave a comment
Like many Chinese cities, Tianjin (meaning “Heavenly Ford” – named by Emperor YongLe) is another exceptional historically rich place to visit. She was once occupied by 9 great nations before the founding of modern China. Today, Tianjin bears marks of her past invaders (Italy, Germany, France, Russia, Great Britain, Austria, Japan and Belgium). There are a lot of European buildings scattered (and well-conserved) in the city, giving Tianjin an unique “European-Oriental” feel.
July is possibly the worst time of the year to visit Tianjin. Weather is extremely hot, hazy and humid. This is Tianjin’s hottest and wettest month. Still, I managed to cover some of its major attractions outside my working hours on Sunday and late Monday afternoon. Not bad for a short 48-hour business trip. It is good that I have the good company of Kelly and Desmond. Poor them – I dragged them for a speedy “touch-&-go” tour with me.
NUMBER 1 – THE PORCELAIN HOUSE
Located in the “5 Great Avenues” – Built over 5 years and decorated with about 400 million pieces of ancient Chinese ceramic chips and over 13,000 ancient Chinese porcelain vases, plates and bowls, the Porcelain House is an uncanny Ceramic Museum. The owner (Zhang Lianzhi) took over 20 years to collect the porcelains and more than 5 years to decorated the building. This massive and expensive project cost the owner more than USD65 million. The owner owns 2 “Porcelain” buildings – 1 museum and 1 restaurant. (Entry Fee: RMB35/adult. Address: No.72 Chifeng Avenue, Heping District Tianjin 300041)
NUMBER 2 – TIANJIN TROPICAL INDOOR BOTANICAL GARDEN (天津热带植物观光园)
Covering 3,000 acres, this is Asia’s largest indoor botanical garden. It houses over 100,000 species of plants from tropical and subtropical regions. Despite the hot 34-degree weather, I found it pleasantly cooling strolling inside this giant greenhouse. Beautiful landscaping with big man-made waterfall, lakes, caves and a mini Mayan Pyramid. (Entry fee: RMB50/adult. Address: 300 m North of Bridge, West Outer Ring Line7, Xiqing District Tianjin 300384)
NUMBER 3 – SUNSET AT TIANJIN HAI RIVER (天津海河)
The night view over Hai River is calm and beautiful at night. At Jiefang Bridge, we saw many people sitting on the concrete river bank enjoying the cooling sunset. Traveling on the cab along the river, we saw many different bridges – from old to modern. Here, you will find the world’s 4th largest 120m tall Ferris Wheel, “Tianjin Eye” (or the largest Ferris Wheel ever built on a bridge).
NUMBER 4 – DRUM TOWER OLD STREETS (鼓楼东街)
The Drum Tower is situated in the center of the ancient town where 4 old Chinese streets (north, south, east and west) meet. It is like taking a walk in an old Chinese town. Except this is a tourist place where we find lots of shops selling typical local handicrafts and souvenirs.
NUMBER 5 – BINJIANG SHOPPING STREET – SHOPPING AND DINING (滨江路购物街)
Like most “Bu Xing Jie” (步行街) in China, this is the busiest pedestrian-shopping-street in Tianjin. Long buzzing streets lined with tall shopping malls on both sides. (Feels very much like the Nanjing Bu Xing Jie in Shanghai or Beijing). Here, we found the main shop of the world’s famous Tianjin “Goubuli Buns – 狗不理包子“!
The bun has an interesting product story. If you translate the name literally, it means “Dog Ignore Bun”. The word “Dog (狗)” doesn’t mean the animal but the actual name of the chef who made these buns. His dad (a farmer) named him “Baby Dog” for safety and good blessing. Dog came to Tianjin at the age of 14 and started his apprenticeship at a local steam food shop. He was so good in his cooking skills that he started his first shop in 1858. It was said that when Dog was making the buns, he was so engrossed in the process that he was not responsive to anyone. His customers gave him the nickname “Dog Ignore (狗不理)”. When General Yuan Shikai was training his troops in Tianjin, he offered Dog’s buns to Empress Dowager Cixi. She fell in love with the buns and praised “The bun is tastier than any beasts in the forest, birds in the sky, lambs on the plains and fish in the ocean!” From then on, Goubuli Buns (狗不理包子) became a well-known brand in China.
June 21, 2011 Leave a comment
(Photo Taken: Liverpool Street, Sydney – This is one line you won’t want to cross. Below the birds marked a white line of droppings.)
June 21, 2011 Leave a comment
Finally, it is time to say goodbye. Today is our 10th day and we are flying back to Singapore. Felicia is sitting on my left watching TV and Elkan on my right playing monopoly on his iPad. Me? Writing this blog on the plane now so I can just post them up when I reach home later this evening at 1130pm.
Not sure if we are going to have another difficult farewell at the transit gate later. I guess not cos there are Tracy and Meijie with us. (And I have filled Elkan’s bag with so much goodies and his IPad full of our holidays photos!) Thanks Meijie and Tracy for taking such good care of us when we were there in Australia. You guys are the best baby-sitters!
Over 2’000 photos and 150 video clips were taken this trip. 20 travel blogs were recorded on the road every day. Life today will be a big contrast tomorrow. Elkan will be going back to school next Monday. And I will be diving into piles of work waiting for me in office tomorrow morning. We had so much fun in the last 10 days. Yeah…this is what I call “work hard, play harder”!
Will see both of you soon. Sleep tight tonight and see you guys in the Aussie Dreamland.
June 21, 2011 Leave a comment
Today is our 2nd last day in Australia. Theoretically, it is our last activity day as we will be leaving for Singapore & Hong Kong first thing tomorrow morning. We cancelled the Blue Mountains tour. I reckon the group had enough of wildlife, sea and forest. We decided to spend our last day exploring the city. Finally, we have some “free-&-easy” time.
Tracy went off to meet her Australian friend. We dragged lazybones Meijie to the museum to see more bones! Felicia and I wanted to bring Elkan to see those gigantic dinosaurs skeletons, fossils, rocks and stuffed animals.
The Australian Museum is modern, high-tech and visitor-friendly. Exhibits are well-spaced and designed. There are a lot of digital screens, giant projection walls and tables for kids to interact with the content. It has a rich collection of Australia’s culture and nature gems.
Opposite the museum stands one of the world’s largest cathedrals – the 106m-long St Mary’s Cathedral. Interestingly, it started it’s first service in 1833, works on the cathedral’s spires weren’t completed until 2000! No photography is allowed inside the cathedral. I managed to take a couple of shots before I was caught. Sigh, I would love to show the beautiful Birmingham-made stained glass windows.
Finally, we arrived at the last stop for our trip – the Paddy’s Markets. Armed with big canvas shopping bags, we spent 2 hours, combing this huge 1000-stalls market for souvenirs and food stuffs for our families and friends back home. It reminded me of the old Shanghai’s “XiangYang Markets”. Most of the vendors were either Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysians and Thais.
Unlike the Perth’s Fremantle Markets, I thought Paddy is too generalised and overly-commercialized. It was boring and monotonous. Shops were selling the same things. (The only good thing was the competitions kept the prices low. We got good bargains here.) There were only a couple of specialty shops selling local-made crafts. (Below is another shopping place “Queen Victoria Building” where you get the top luxury premium brands)
June 21, 2011 Leave a comment
The return bus trip from Gold Coast was longer than our first. The driver took a different inland route (with lots of gravel roads and turns) and that prolonged our ride by another 2 hours. Surprisingly, the 17-hour ride was much more comfortable than I expected. Perhaps we were better prepared (and equipped) this time. Elkan and I slept uninterrupted throughout the bumpy night.
Daybreak – We drew our curtains and saw a golden vast land – meadows, farms and lakes. Dawn is exceptionally beautiful in Australia. A spectrum of colours lighted up at the horizon. Cottons of low clouds changed colours from violet to pink. Silhouettes of trees swayed gently in the morning breeze with threads of sparkling golden light illuminating its intricate forms. It felt like watching the creation of a beautiful embroidery on a silky canvas. We were witnessing the best art show from Mother Nature.
Sydney was all sunny and blue sky. No rain, no gloomy sky and certainly no more volcanic ash clouds. We parked ourselves in a backpacker’s hotel right in the city centre. Due to the strong Australian dollars (AUD$1 = HKD8.45), everything seemed so expensive. Despite the high prices, food came in big and generous portions. To my amaze, the Chinese, Korean and Japanese food were “genuinely” tasty!
After a delicious Japanese lunch, we decided to take a long 45-minute walk to Paddington Saturday Markets to check out the stalls. There were a lot of shops selling handicrafts, paintings, photographs, fragrant oils, clothes, bags and palm-reading services. There were even stalls that were just selling sliced bread-with-homemade jams. That simple and tasty!
The markets closed at 4pm and we headed to another world’s famous attraction. Known as one of the world’s greatest beaches, Bondi offers big white powdery beaches and great swelling waves for surfing. There weren’t a lot of people in winter, mainly tourists like us. There were a lot of shops and restaurants by the beach. By 5pm, the sky turned dark and shops were closing. We didn’t have enough time to check out the Bondi Markets and the Bondi Openair Cinema.
We went back to drop our bags at the hotel. The ladies and kid continued shopping around Chinatown and George Street. Meijie and I planned a boys’ night-out to check out Sydney’s notorious (legalised) red-light district, Kings Cross Road. We told the ladies that we might be back late.
Honestly, I was a little disappointed. I was expecting to see a raunchier and dodgy street. Most joints were small and looked less vibrant than our very own Joo Chiat street. Two of us felt kinda out-of-place here. We decided to end our long day and headed back to our hotel. (Ha… The ladies weren’t back from their shopping yet,)
June 18, 2011 4 Comments
Today is our last day in Gold Coast. Later this evening, we will be boarding the 15-hour coach back to Sydney. The last 4 days have been really fun, exciting and fruitful. From night forest hike to whale watching, we have attempted almost every attraction available here (except those dare-devil diving activities). We decided to save the “best adrenaline program” on our last day.
Tracy signed all of us on the fastest jet boat in Gold Coast. We are talking about 60 minutes of extreme jet boating – 440hp, 360-degree spins, wake surfing, high speed drifting and beach buzzing. Felicia was smart to opt out of this activity.
Something interesting happened. There was a TV shoot today and they requested an aerial shot of the jet boats. We were asked if we are keen to be part of the shoot. The complication and inconvenience? Longer boat ride and maybe a few reshoots of the stunts. Wow! Isn’t that a bonus if we have to redo many stunts? We said “yes” instantly and signed up for the shoot.
It was an awesome & fun experience. The TV crew was sitting on a helicopter, hovering just above our heads. The crew has to follow specific storyboards and stunts. (Don’t ask me – We have no idea what they are shooting for…) There were a couple of reshoots and all we were asked to do was to wave at the helicopter. After 30 minutes of NGs and “stunts”, we finally completed the shoot. The cameraman on the chopper gave us a thumb-up and took off. We then proceed with the “normal 60-min ride”.
Our “normal ride” turned out to be more dramatic and “scarier” than the video shoot. Out of the blue, Tracy was screaming at the top of her voice in the middle of the ride. We thought she was enjoying the spins and smiled back at her. However, we realised she wasn’t screaming in joy. Half of her body was covered with Elkan’s puke! Haaaa….my little boy couldn’t take the extreme spins and puked all over Tracy! (She was unlucky to sit in the wind’s direction!) It was a hilarious sight. We couldn’t stop laughing. Watch the video below.
June 18, 2011 7 Comments
Every year between June and October, Antarctica whales travel up north to Australia to breed. Gold Coast is one of the last safe havens where females give birth to their calves before they return to the colder southern waters in October. We are in Gold Coast at the perfect season to witness the courtship of whales out in the wild.
The whale-watching operator is very experienced and they guarantee 100% whale-sightings. We have done a few dolphin watching trips in Hong Kong but the sightings were usually very rare and far. Whale-watching in Gold Coast is a very rewarding experience. In our tour, we came very close to the whales – not 1 or 2 but at least 4-5 whales (each 12-15m long!). We also had close encounters with the dolphins. Spotting the whales was easy and it didn’t take long before we spotted one – the Humpback Whale is an acrobatic animal, often breaching (leaping out of water) and slapping the water. To protect these gentle giants, Australia has strict laws on whale-watching. Operators must keep a distance of at least 100m.
We learnt so much about these magnificent animals. Between the 50s-60s, Humpbacks were hunted to the brink of extinction. Thanks to the whale recovery program, Humpbacks are now sought by whale-watchers today and not butchers. Their numbers have recovered significantly from 5,000 to 80,000 today. Humpback’s average lifespan is between 50-85 years old but new studies reveal that some can live beyond 100 years.
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