I Love China

I realise some of you may be panicking after seeing no updates for 5 days. I do apologise, I haven’t stopped blogging, but after a 20 hour flight (more on that later), I’ve only just recovered from the jet lag.

So anyway, here I am in Toronto, Canada for a family wedding. That’s the CN Tower behind me which I think the Pearl TV Tower in Shanghai seems to be modelled on. It was up until 2007, the tallest building in the world and is way taller than its Shanghai rival.

I promise to update more regularly from now on, but in the mean time, feel free to chat amongst yourselves.

Here’s another classic early WoAi “blog” entry from January 1979:

“Dad said we are not allowed to buy sweets anymore without asking him because we ate sweets just before lunch. The sweets were Tooty Frooties and Freshen-Ups”

I think it’s hilarious I felt it necessary to specifically mention what the sweets were that resulted in my dad’s candy crackdown.

Does anyone remember Tooty Frooties and Freshen-Ups? Rowntree’s Tooty Frooties were launched in 1963 and were chewy fruity sweets with a polished crunchy sugar coating and contained fruit juice and no artificial colours or flavours.  (Rowntree is now owned by food giant Nestle). I believe Freshen Up was a gum that had liquid in the centre that squirted out in your mouth.

Some of you have been following my blog for a few years, but I’ve actually been “blogging” since the 1970s. No seriously, here’s an entry from Christmas Day 1978 which astonishingly was almost 32 years ago!

My Christmas presents were Sorry, Roulette, The Visible Man (model kit), Space Shuttle with 747 model kit and Escape From Colditz Castle board game.

I vaguely remember the Visible Man was a sort of transparent human model so you could see all the key parts of the human anatomy. I’m not sure what Sorry was, but I am guessing another game of some kind. And Escape From Colditz was a board game invented by someone who actually survived. The image above is not one I took, thanks to Google, these things can be found with just a few clicks.

More acceptable version with swastika replaced by eagle

Apparently, early versions of this game (which was first issued in 1973) are collectors items and worth quite a bit of money, especially as they originally had controversial swastikas on the box that were removed in later versions (imagine something like this in shops today!).

I’ll post more of these vintage WoAi posts in the future.

Yes, it’s already been a year since the last big bash at Lounge 18. This year I wanted something fairly relaxed and chilled so I booked 3 tables for 10pm at Barbarosa in People’s Park. Read the rest of this entry »

Next to the UK pavilion was the Dutch pavilion. It’s dubbed “happy street” and I guess the idea here was for it to be fun and not too serious. It was the only pavilion that wasn’t actually open when I first saw it. There was some kind of opening ceremony later in the morning with lots of people in business suits and a large group of photographers and finally we were allowed in. I say in, the entire pavilion is really just a spiral ramp you walk up and down and along the way there are various small individual rooms that are locked but with windows so you can look inside. Read the rest of this entry »

The UK pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo

Ow, ow, ow! That’s what I say every time I try to walk. My feet are in a very delicate state after 12 hours of walking the 5 square kilometre Expo site on its first day of opening to the public. To add to that, it seems summer timed its arrival to coincide with the Expo opening, so not only did I sweat like a pig, but my arms are a nice shade of pink and are going to be quite sore for the next few days, I’m sure. So was it all worth it? Well, yes. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, after years of preparation, Shanghai is finally ready for the 2010 World Expo and guess who has a ticket for the opening day tomorrow! I haven’t been this excited since I went to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The camera bag is packed, so pictures and a full report will of course follow …. unless it rains.

My flight back from HK to Shanghai was probably the worst flying experience I have encountered, and believe me, I’ve had my fair share of bad experiences.

We were due to leave HK at 7pm when I went to the gate, I was told Shanghai airport was closed due to fog. I guess the fog eventually cleared up because we were able to take off 2 hours later at 9pm. On our descent in to Shanghai I watched as the altitude dropped from 10,000 metres to less than 100 metres. “Ah, we’re almost home” I thought to myself. Then suddenly, I could feel the aircraft speed up and we started to climb, higher and higher. This has happened to me before, once when landing in Beijing there was something on the runway so we had to circle round while they cleared it away. No big deal.

After a few minutes the pilot announced that the fog was very low and he was going to try again. Ok, so perhaps we’ll be another 10 minutes, I thought.

After two more tries, the captain announced it was just not going to happen and he was diverting to Hangzhou which is about 180 kilometres away, so about a 20 minute flight.

We landed at Hangzhou at around 1am. I noticed the skies were very clear, perfect weather for landing. The captain then announced that the immigration officials had gone home so they were being contacted and we had to wait on the plane until they returned and we could be processed. In the mean time of course, we were waiting for news of the weather in Shanghai and if it improved, we could fly back straight away.

It was 3 hours before we finally were allowed off the plane. Several other planes were diverted so there was actually a wait for the earlier planes to be processed first. So at 4am, sleep-eyed, we went through immigration and collected our luggage and were told to head to exit 3.

There were 3 coaches waiting there and passengers rushed to put their luggage in the compartment below before boarding the bus. The problem was, the luggage compartment was too small so many people had to take their luggage on to the bus, which meant many seats could not be used. I’ve been in China long enough to know in these situations you have act quickly, so I threw my suitcase in the hold and rushed to grab one of the last remaining seats on the last of 3 buses. As I expected, about 25 people were not able to find seats and were standing by the bus looking anxious.

It was by now 5am and we all wanted to get to our hotel which the airline had arranged so we could get a few hours sleep. We didn’t know what the hold up was until we started to hear shouting and realised there was a man standing in front of our bus, refusing to let us get on our way. He was screaming “how can you lave us here in the middle of the night, I demand a full apology” etc etc. The airline representative explained the 2 buses that had already left would return to pick them up as soon as they had dropped off the first batch of passengers, but this wasn’t acceptable to the irate passenger.

Many people on the bus were exhausted and keen to get some sleep, so it turned in to a bit of a tussle between the two groups of passengers that got slightly physical. The people on the bus were saying things like “why are you being so selfish and not considering others who are tired and want to sleep”. I think they had a point but the stubborn passenger refused to give way. I get the feeling he was starting to feel he was in the wrong but couldn’t back down or he would lose face which would be a fate worse than death.

Eventually, someone managed to convince the man to move away from the front of the bus and we were on our way to the hotel which was about 30 minutes drive away in Xiao Shan, a small city near Hangzhou. By now though, the Shanghai fog seemed to have reached Hangzhou and I was quite horrified to see that the driver’s visibility was down to about 2 metres at best, but this didn’t seem to discourage him from driving at great speed. In spite of this, we managed to get to the hotel at around 5.30am and again, quick thinking on my part meant I managed to grab a room ahead of most of the other passengers and was soon enjoying some much needed sleep.

The next morning we were given two options : a bus back to Shanghai (about 3 hours) or we could be taken back to the airport and flown back. I did not want to risk further weather related delays so I opted for the bus as did almost all of the other passengers.

I finally arrived in Shanghai at 1pm the next afternoon, a full 18 hours after we were due to leave Hong Kong. Luckily I had taken an extra day off work so I didn’t have to go in to work, but on the other hand, I spent the rest of the day catching up on sleep and basically wasted an entire day off.

Perfect weather again for day 2 and once again, we took it at a leisurely pace, starting with a south east Asian buffet lunch at Straits Kitchen at the Grand Hyatt which was recommended to me by several Singaporeans including Miss Beverly. It was quite convenient too as I just happened to be staying at the Grand Hyatt for my two day stay.

I did each region one at a time. This was the Indian selection. By far my favourite though was the Laksa.

After lunch we walked around Orchard road a bit more and amazingly, bumped in to Singaporean blogger Jill and her cousin in a shopping mall. I mean, I know Singapore is small, but not that small!

Dinner consisted of Mez’ze, falafel and kebabs at Cafe Le Caire, an Egyptian cafe on Arab Street in Kampong Glam, near Little India.

A mosque spotted on the short stroll from Arab Street to Little India.

And well, that was about it for Singapore. We had a 6.50am flight back to Hong Kong, which meant waking up at 4am in order to make the 4.30am car pick up. Ouch!

More on the flight in a separate post. Goodbye Singapore, it was short but sweet …. and hot! I’m missing Chili crabs and Laksa already.

I have to say, the two days I spent in Singapore with mum were an absolute delight. The weather was gorgeous – hot, sunny, blue skies. The people were warm, polite and friendly. And the food was not exactly difficult to cope with. Here are a few pictures from day one.

With mum atop the world’s tallest Ferris wheel, the Singapore Flyer (yes, it’s even taller than the London Eye).

I must confess, I’m a bit of a lazy traveller. I’m not the type to get up at the crack of dawn and proudly tick off 4 or 5 places on a must see list by noon. So we actually started day one rather late, around noon, with a cheap lunch at the Food Republic food court on the 4th floor of Wisma Atria on Orchard Road. Then we did a bit of shopping but after an hour or so I was ready to go back to the hotel for a rest. We didn’t head out again until around 6pm, just in time to catch sunset on the Singapore Flyer (tickets are $29.50 Singapore dollars for adults, and $23.60 for senior citizens – I anticipate lots of immature jokes about me being a senior citizen, so go ahead and get it out of your system).

Our capsule. We all took turns to get in the way of eachother’s photos, although there was one woman in particular who did a fantastic job of ruining our shot by walking in front of my camera not once but three times – you stupid dopey bitch!

Enjoying a Singapore Sling at The Long Bar, Raffles Hotel

We walked from the Singapore Flyer to Raffles Hotel to try the world famous Singapore Sling cocktail. The walk was a bit longer than I thought (about a kilometre) and perhaps given the heat, a taxi might have been a better bet (sorry mum).

The cocktail was of course invented in this very bar and it seemed like almost every customer was on a pilgrimage to try it.

Exterior of Raffles Hotel

Newton Circus Hawker Centre

After cocktails at Raffles we headed for chili crabs at the Newton Circus Hawker Centre where there are scores of tiny stalls selling all sorts of local specialities. Mum’s a small eater so all we had was chili crab, tiger prawns, a plate of kai lan vegetables and some rice.

Yes, it is touristy, no, it’s not particularly cheap, but it was still well worth including in a two day Singapore itinerary.

Then it was straight to the hotel for a much needed rest so that we’d have enough energy to get up before noon on day two ….