Bye 2009!

Sobs. its the first day of 2010 yet I dont feel so eager about welcoming the new year. I haven't got over the holiday mood.. and school starts in 2 days' time. Darn.

Ah bao and I travelled alot this december. First to Fujian for 9 days under painfully cold weather and then 6 hours upon returning at Changi airport, we are hoisted off to Malacca to enjoy the sweltering hot weather and bug-infested chendol. Sounds bad but its actually all quite enjoyable.. lol..

Fujian is wayyy nicer then i thought! The toilets aren't as scary nor doorless (save for the ones high up in the mountains) abd the people there speak ENGLISH. We found out about this amazing ( GASP!) fact when we ordered MacDonald from the hotel. And guess what, Xiamen's MacDonalds beats Spore! their service is so much better, and the McSpicy was yummilicious! So we ordered Mac, TWICE during our 9 day stay and KFC once. I know it must be weird to order fast food during a tour but we were just so sick of the food after a while. Why? Cuz breakfast is always the same cold, oily youtiao and mantou, and some weird looking stuff that passes off as vegetables. Lunch and dinner are 10 course meals, and each meal die die will have prawns, fish, pork belly/thigh/blood, etc etc, 2 types of veggies, 2 types of soup, noodles and some another random dishes. -.-

I ate 3 bowls of rice for each meal. Plus 2 bowls of noodles.Though it made me bloated sometimes, I think i will feel worse for wasting food.

One fun thing about China is that we get to play with firecrackers and all sorts of forbidden gunpowder-related items. At one of the hotels we stayed at, the hotel admin allocated a space in their flower garden for our tour group to set off fireworks and firecrackers. Yup folks, we set off fireworks aka the ones u see on national day, but on a smaller scale of course. The sound of the fireworks were so deafening, i got a shock when the first one shoot out into the sky and exploded JUST ABOVE MY HEAD. then little flakes of fiery dunno-what will start falling back to the ground and some settled on my head so i was so panicky like some headless chicken. Ah xiang was so fascinated, he stood there and i had to drag him away from the falling fiery flakes. -.- lol.. but the whole fireworks display was cool! especially when there's nothing else in the night sky that obstructs the view.

There were lots of climbing.. and lots of hotel-switching too. We stayed in about 6 different hotels during our 9 day trip. On the 3rd day we took a domestic flight to a mountainous region and the only attraction there was the mountains. So, i did more climbing i ever did in my life, climbing all the way to the top of the mountain. As u know, the mountain in China can be 10 times as high as our Bt Timah hill. So i huffed and puffed as I scaled the steps that are so steep, its like climbing a ladder rather then stairs. Not to mention that the temperature was constantly around 5-10 degrees celsius and my hands felt as though they are plunged in ice water ALL the time. Nonetheless, im so proud of myself for scaling the mountain!! hehehehe

We visited Ah xiang's ancestor's village too, right at the top of another tall mountain. I wonder how his ancestors managed to walk down the mountain, or even hear of Singapore when they are soooooo isolated up there. The Liang village was nice and quaint, and the villagers were all very friendly! We saw his little baby nephew too, and he's sooo cute!!!!!! And i think he has the potential to be a woman-killer when he grows up, cuz his features are so beautiful! hehe

SO many other stuff that we saw too, but im just too lazy to type. haha. Check out the pics on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=131914&id=507163509&saved#/album.php?aid=131914&id=507163509