Posts filed under 'Photos'
okay, this is the post on the cute hotel i stayed at in Bangkok! i’ve been getting so many emails asking about this hotel after i mentioned it in the Chatuchak post, and now i’m feeling quite regretful that i didn’t take pictures of the hotel properly. haih! but i will try my very best to do justice to the cuteness of this hotel, ok? :P
Reflections is a place that would typically be classified under boutique hotels, but i think a better term for it is ‘art inn’. converted from a few shophouses into one of the coolest travel accommodations i’ve ever stayed in, Reflections resembles an inn more than it does a hotel because of its size, layout, amenities and location. with its lobby doors opening right out onto the streets of Pradiphat, Bangkok, it is distinguishable from its neighbouring pharmacies and grocery stores only by the bright turquoise colors of its walls.
i thought it was a little strange to find such a striking boutique hotel/inn nestled amongst these common and drab shophouses, but i later realized how much it added to the overall charm of the place. your balcony opens up to life in the midst of non-tourist Bangkok, and you cant help but feel extremely welcome and at ease in a place that is so genuine and down-to-earth.
Reflections has only 30 rooms, and the reason why i think it should be called an art inn is that each and every one of its 30 rooms has a theme and design unique to itself. no two rooms in Reflections are alike, and they are all conceptualized and designed by different artists. isn’t that so cool! eeyang and i had a lot of fun browsing through their website and picking out which rooms we wanted.
here are pictures of the rooms we stayed in!:
ROOM 409
Price: 1850 baht /night (RM 185)
#1 this is Eeyang’s room - Room 409. the theme here is positive energy-meets-nature. the room is actually not as warmly-lit as the pictures imply, and it can get a bit gloomy in here because the lighting isn’t very powerful, but overall it’s clean, simple and very spacious.
#2 we had a good giggle looking at the shower, because it opens right into the bedroom, and there’s no door to the bathroom/toilet space :P this room was quite uninteresting to us because there really wasn’t much relevance to the theme, and nothing quirky to poke at :( the other rooms, as you shall soon see, are less spartan and have a lot of very interesting touches.
#3 eeyang posing on the bed. isnt that stool with the phone so cute! oh and the notepads in this hotel are pads of multi-coloured post its :D
ROOM 203
Price: 2250 baht /night (RM 225)
#4 this is the door leading into Room 203, which was my room, and located on the ground floor of the block next door (Reflections takes up two blocks of shoplots), and they’re separated by a small walkway compound. we were SO lucky that someone canceled their booking and we could get this room upon check-in, because it was one of our first choices :D
#5 this room is huuuge and very cheerful! after the gloom and barrenness of Room 409, i was glad to come into this homey and cozy room. aptly, this room is themed ‘Wish You Were Here’ and has tones of nostalgia and old charm.
#6 this is the bathroom of Room 203. the wooden part is where the shower area is. i like! bigger bathroom than the previous room, although also separated by curtains and not a lockable door.
#7 the artist of this room really knew how to bring out the theme of nostalgia. lots of interesting old-school toys and dolls to poke around with in this room. i really liked it in here :)
ROOM 202
Price: 2250 baht /night (RM 225)
#8 Room 202 is an EXTREMELY CUTE room!! it’s the room next to mine, and when we came back from breakfast, the housekeeps were in there cleaning up, so we asked if we could go in to take a look. i was so enamoured by the little details of this room that i forgot to take a shot of the whole room :( but you can click here to see what it looks like
#9 this is a sink right in front of the bed, where you can use those paints and brushes and paint onto that mural next to the sink. damn nice right! it was very cool seeing all the arty additions by all the people who’ve stayed in this room before and left behind a little bit of themselves on the mural :)
#10 this is the clothesrack. haha two big birds!
#11 the mirror that’s been painted on, too. check out the lockers behind me that serve as drawers!
#12 this is the sofa-bed. eeyang and i originally wanted this room for the sofa bed because we could have saved on the double room costs :( but oh well. such is thy fate if thy booketh thy hotel room only 4 days before trip!
GENERAL OPINION ON ROOMS:
i really prefer the latter two rooms to the first; the extra RM 40 really makes all the difference. all rooms in Reflections have free wifi access (an extremely strong deciding factor for me when choosing hotel rooms!!!) but the rooms in the second block get stronger connectivity. we couldnt get connectivity in Room 409 at all, which was another reason why i didnt like that room.
note that ALL rooms in Reflections have double beds; there are no single or twin bed rooms. this posed quite a problem on this trip, hence we had to book 2 rooms and spend a lot of money. haih. so this is a hotel best for couples or friends who don’t mind sharing the same bed. there are some rooms with sofa beds though, and i think there is one room that actually has a single bed next to the double bed. OR, you can do what we realized WAY too late we could do, which is purchase one of those extra beds for 500 baht (RM 50) per night and have it wheeled into your room :) *tries not to grumble at amount of money that could have been saved*
besides 202 and 203, our other first choices were Room 303 and Room 402.
——-
#13 our room keys!
#14 stairs leading up to the rooms in the first block. every wall and corner of the entire hotel has some form of art splashed on it.
#15 the broadband-enabled computers in the lobby. thai broadband is faaaaaaaast. there are also lots of books and bangkok travel guidebooks next to the computers. you can borrow the books :)
#16 this is the hotel cafe, where you have your free ala carte breakfast. like the rest of the hotel, it is extremely cute and happy, and has a lot of quirky artistic touches :)
#17 … like this curtain made out of neckties! eeyang and i were goggling at the creativity of this. though it would look much nicer if there were more neckties on the bar!
#18 .. and this super cool chair with little toys glued all over it :) it’s so creative and comfy that i wanted to bring it back home with me T____T
#19 funny drawings like this one are placed where the overhead menu boards usually are
#20 sofas in the cafe for you to read or just chill
#21 eeyang and i with the big teddy bear in the very small hotel lobby. on our last day, both the couch and the bear were gone, because they are apparently the props for the newest room redesign
#22 the extensive DVD library in the lobby!!! you can take any of them back to the room because each room has a DVD player!!! did you know that i found Singing In The Rain and The Seven Year Itch in their collection!!! oh my god!!! but we ended up getting Romeo + Juliet but fell asleep watching it :(
#23 adjacent to the hotel lobby is a space where the hotel owners sell original-design bags and notebooks and clothes and stationery and lots of other stuff. i never managed to ask the hotel staff who designed these things, nor did i get to buy anything :(
#24 CDs at the shop space
#25 clothes and art for sale
#26 very cute notebooks that i wanted to buy back as souvenirs!!! but our ride to the airport came so early :(
#27 funky bags for sale. see the luggage bags behind, in the display window? I WANTED ONE SO BADLY. why did the cab have to come so soon!
okay no more pictures. lemme just give a quick summary of the main facets of a hotel stay :
Rooms: absolutely creative and so much fun to stay in, very clean and comfortable, wifi-enabled, double beds only (but you can purchase additional beds), bathrooms have no door, good beds and pillows, nice towels and bathrobes. room in the first block can be gloomy. book early because there are so little rooms in this place! Rating : 4/5.
Service: top notch. it is a small establishment run by a small handful of people, and each and every one of them were very kind, polite and hospitable. eeyang found a smoke buddy in one of them :P they are extremely helpful, especially with directions, and they don’t hesitate at all to go out and hail a cab with you to tell your cabbie where to go (many cabbies cant speak English). 5/5.
Price & Booking: all rooms go by 4 rates - A) 1850 baht, B) 2250 baht, C) 2950 baht, D) 3450 baht. these prices are just right for boutique hotels. but of course this is Bangkok, and you can find cheaper hotels anywhere in the city, but none as unique, comfy and cool as Reflections :) bookings can only be made via their website and phoning in.
Amenities: no pool or gym, though this was no problem for me as i never use either when traveling. there is a hotel cafe with ala carte breakfast, open 24 hours with room service delivery. hotel shop selling those bags and stuff. hotel is wifi-enabled (though some rooms have very weak connectivity; check with concierge prior to booking). two broadband-enabled desktops at lobby. dvd library and a dvd player + tv in every room. air conditioner and hot water in all rooms.
Location: Reflections is located in Pradiphat, which is a 10-15 minute taxi ride to the city center (Sukhumvit, Silom and all) if traffic is good, and that costs about 50 - 70 baht (RM 5 - 7). it’s a 10 baht (RM 1) tuk-tuk ride or a 8-minute walk to the nearest Skytrain station, which is the Saphan Khwai station. in Bangkok, any hotel that’s near the Skytrain = GOOD; very convenient to get around. Reflections is also extremely near the Chatuchak Weekend Market (hehe!) and it costs about 30 baht to get there via tuk-tuk. it is very easy to get taxis from the hotel, and the hotel staff will help you with this. ALSO, there are lots of money changers here - on the same road as Reflections - that give very good rates. change your money here, trust me :D
thus ends my happy review of Reflections Rooms in Bangkok :) it is a lovely, kitsch, quaint place that i’m so glad to have discovered. yes, i would definitely recommend this hotel, and it is definitely where i will stay from now on whenever i go to Bangkok.
feel free to ask me questions if you have any :) charge you i will not, obviously, but if you would like to offer me a Clarinase pill, it would be very welcome. the last of my Clarinase stock was confiscated at the Freedom rave :( runny-nosed and feverish i am now. sigh!
May 13th, 2008
today i’m going to blog about the best - and also my favourite - place to shop in the whole wide world : the Chatuchak Market in Bangkok :)
no trip to Bangkok is complete without a visit to the huge and famous weekend market that houses a vast labyrinth of shops and stalls selling just about anything a shopper could ask for. some 20,000 shops are tucked away haphazardly in this market, separated into 26 different sections according to their 9 categories of wares - books & collectibles, plants & gardening, home utensils & decor, pets and animals, antiques, clothing and accessories, handicrafts, furniture and miscellaneous; somewhat systematic but still thrillingly chaotic.
not only does Chatuchak have the most mind-boggling variety of products for sale, but everything is also CHEAP like nothing you’ve ever seen before!!! so cheap that every weekend in Bangkok, resellers and business owners from all over the world descend onto Chatuchak to stock up wholesale on super-cheap clothes, furniture, accessories and jewelry to bring back to their shops to re-sell for triple the price. (read: Bangsar and Hartamas boutiques ;) the rest of us holidaying shoppers can also share the joy of finding bargains in every nook and corner of the market. dangly earrings for RM 1 per pair? little wooden stools for RM 3? sundresses and original artist-designed tshirts for RM 15? a whole box of beautiful glass jars for RM 8? only in Chatuchak :)
upon touchdown in Bangkok, eeyang came to ask me : “so where do you wanna go first?” and i instantly screamed “CHATUCHAK!!!!” please, as if he even needed to ask. sigh i seriously believe that my birthplace is actually Chatuchak. there is no other place on earth in which i feel more at home and ALIVE :D and so we spent the first 4 hours of our time in Bangkok trawling Chatuchak and scavenging for the best buys. we emerged happy! very very tired and sweaty but happy.
pictures! :
#1 little bags and clutches going for 59 baht (RM 5.9) and 100 baht (RM 10)
#2 this is a shop selling art materials; there is a whole area in Chatuchak just for handicraft stuff. i go CRAZY buying materials everytime i’m here! sieutheng, ginny and vvens, you guys would love it too. ink pens, marker pens, all kinds of paper, string, ribbon, buttons and all kinds of craft items for super cheap!
#3 bundles of tissue paper for so cheap. i remember how when we were doing that Valentines’ Day roses project back in Form 5, and i was so happy to find tissue for RM 30/bundle at SSF in Jalan TAR. here in Chatuchak it’s RM 10, without bargaining yet. sigh!
#4 adorable puppies for sale :) there was a REALLY cute pure-breed pomeranian that cost only RM 200!!! wtfish! in KL it would probably sell for RM 1,600.
#5 this is my attempt at taking a The Dog picture, hehe. it’s a quasi-milo dog!! :D
#6 handmade postcards that i bought for RM 2 each after bargaining. i was so attracted to them because the postcards featured a lot of teddy bears that i actually have! see that monkey, and that Tigger and Piglet? i have them too! the photos in the postcards were taken by the shopowner’s sister - she’d take all her soft toys along with her and drive around the rural areas of Thailand to do her photoshoots, then make cards out of her photos. so creative! i bought a whole bunch back to use as birthday cards :)
#7 earrings for RM 1 a pair. i bought a dozen :D hello!!! it’s RM 1!!!
#8 this shop color-coded all their earrings. the girl in the photo is Malaysian too, and she kept going, “aiyo die lah how could i have spent so much money buying all those earrings from The Curve when it’s so cheap here!!”. i totally know how she felt because i kept seeing at Chatuchak all these dresses that i bought from Bangsar.. but at one third the price i paid :(
#9 happy mugs!
#10 happy clips!
#11 lots of little shops like these that sell pretty clothes. even though they’re quite cheap, the problem is you cant try the clothes on. unless the shop happens to have a makeshift dressing-room; usually just a pinned up cloth. works, nevertheless! the blue dress i’m wearing in the McDonalds video is from Chatuchak - cost only RM 10! i bought the same dress in pink too.
#12 haha this is eeyang eating some chocolate donut thing. he’s wearing my heart necklace -___- he just came into my room, picked it up and threw it around his neck. i didnt even realize he was wearing it until i took this picture. even then, he didnt want to give it back -_____- haih sometimes i worry about him.
#13 REALLY PRETTY FLIP FLOPS FOR ONLY RM 5!!!! it’s not even the strawy/beachy type of flip flops that are so native to Thailand. sigh. i was so smitten i bought 3 pairs. that’s my finger pointing at a pink pair that i bought. i wanted the orange one at the upper left corner but no size :(
#14 eeyang thought i had to have this shirt because i am actually a cat ^___^ i should have bought the piggy one at the back because i am also a pig :| the shirts here are slightly more expensive (RM 20) cos they’re original designs.
#15 handwoven Moccasin-type shoes! so cuuute. but one rainy day and it’ll be all ruined :|
#16 me and the best drink that Thailand has to offer - the orange juice! they use these oranges that are very very much like mandarin oranges, and the drink is just so mind-numbingly good. SIGH. i miss!
#17 we bumped into Jack Sparrow hahahaha
#18 bags! but after trawling all of Chatuchak, i didnt find any that i really really liked :\
#19 this shop looks like it belongs in a mall, doesnt it? Chatuchak has loads of these. very quirkily-designed shops with quality products.
#20 so cool, right? a bag made out of an empty rice sack
#21 pouches and pencil cases for RM 9.90. i bought that colorful one underneath the sign, and also a red faux croc skin case for my make-up. contentment!
#22 gorgeous tribal-design earrings! RM 8 per pair, also original designs. no other shop in Chatuchak had these earrings.
there are soooooooo many more things quaint items in Chatuchak that i didn’t take pictures of, and also that i wish i bought :( eeyang and i went back to Chatuchak again the following day because we felt we just HAD to buy more stuff. haha. my biggest regret was not buying this beautiful oil painting from this artist who had a most unique and dreamlike style. but it cost RM 150, and i didnt have enough cash on me :\ by the time i got more cash, i couldnt find her shop again.
which brings me to …
PINKPAU’S TIPS FOR CHATUCHAK MARKET!
1. if you see something you like, buy it right away. don’t even think of walking around to compare prices and then coming back, because chances are you won’t be able to find the shop again. that’s how big and messy Chatuchak is
2. if you MUST move away from a shop but want to come back, ask them for a business card or the section and soi (street .. or in this case alley) of their shop. most merchants in the market will know how to direct you back to your intended shop just by looking at the section & soi.
3. dont stray too far from your friends!! it can be a REAL pain in the butt to locate each other again, even if you have phones. if you are in a big group and it’s just impossible to shop together, designate a place to meet-up again at a certain time. one good spot to do this is the Clock Tower. there are buggies in the open-air areas that will ferry you around for free, but you must ask them to take you to your intended spot.
4. wear comfortable shoes. i’d suggest something like flip flops, which are comfy but also easy to remove in case you want to try on or shop for shoes
5. dress lightly and appropriately for the hot sticky weather, and also for lots of shoulder-rubbing and body-grazing; the Chatuchak crowd is not to be underestimated :P
6. try not to use the bathrooms if you can help it. the bathrooms are few, overly crowded, dirty and faaaar away.
7. yes you can bargain at most shops!
8. have fun exploring Chatuchak!!! here, only the fittest will survive and emerge victorious :P
oh, chatuchak. oh, cheap shopping. oh, wonderful smorgasbord of hodgepodge and bric-a-brac. my heart longs for you so! hey if anyone wants certain kinds of things from Chatuchak, lemme know :) i may be going back there sometime in June or July, so can help you folks buy.
i’m going to write about my hotel in Bangkok in the next post. oh it is the CUTEST hotel you will ever lay eyes on, and i’m so excited to write about it!! :D
May 7th, 2008
i know i said a while ago i’d put up pictures of my trip to Ringha / Shangri La and also of the local food we had in Kunming, but i’ve decided not to. there is only a simple reason behind it, but i know that once i start ranting, i will probably say more than i should and the result will be an excessively long and largely irrelevant post about a topic that doesn’t deserve more than a few words. so… no :)
okay here’s just one food picture from Kunming:
this is a little shop in town that sells flour buns filled with different kinds of stuffing. everyone in the vicinity seemed to be eating one, and so i really wanted one too, but when we got to the shop we didn’t know how to read the chinese signs :( and the staff couldn’t speak english! the only board we (actually, Martian) could read was the one that says ‘peanut’, so that’s the one we got. and it was really good, too :D
now… can someone please read out the rest of the boards to me? pleeeeease! so i know what other types of buns i missed out on! yes lah i know i’m damn banana please dont laugh at me :(
and here’s ONE picture from Ringha.. because it’s too beautiful a place to not have any photos of it at all :
this is what we woke up to every morning in Ringha. they don’t call this place Shangri La for nothing.. :)
sigh. i really want to share the Ringha pictures. i spent so much time there trying to capture the perfect pictures, i can’t not put them up. haiyah whatever lah right? i don’t know why i’m being so angry also. wusaaaaaa. inner peace. righto. so here are some of my favourite pictures from Ringha :
#1 the river behind our hotel, taken on the first day when it hadn’t snowed yet
#2 sheep!! there are lots of mountain animals roaming around the area. there’s a particular abundance of yak, the butter from which is used for lots of things, including cooking, making candles and making.. tea. yeah. yak butter tea O_O
#3 snow at night :) this was right after dinner on our first night, and when the hotel staff told us it was snowing, we both ran squealing into the night. okay lah maybe just me :( all Martian did was laugh at me
#4 part of our really, really nice room. we stayed at the Banyan Tree :) our room is one of the most gorgeous rooms i’ve ever stayed in - it’s like a Tibetan-style mountain lodge!! all the rooms have 2 floors with 2 bedrooms, and the *entire* bottom floor is the bathroom and the changing room. the bathtub is especially cool - it’s right in the middle of the open bathroom floor, and is of the wooden Japanese tub kind. really nice to soak in amidst the freezing weather! the resort is very cozy and has lovely, authentic Tibetan decor - lacquered furniture, woven carpets, dark wood paneling and all. yes i’m trying very hard not to gush :| and you know what.. all the rooms in the resort actually used to be YAK STABLES where the farmer lived on the top floor, before the land was bought over and converted into a resort. such clever preservation.
#5 hot ginger tea: Ringha’s cure for anything at all. altitude sickness? have some ginger tea. fatigue? drink ginger tea. nausea? ginger tea. headache? ginger tea. foot pains? ginger tea. sexual disinterest? yup you guessed it, ginger tea. it’s actually very nice and tastes like tong yuen soup, but with more body to it. both Martian and i love this tea :) i really wish i’d asked them for the recipe; i don’t think it’s as simple as boiling ginger and brown sugar!
#6 Martian playing with the telescope that we never figured out how to use
#7 isn’t Ringha beautiful. sigh. i can only imagine how gorgeous it looks in the summer.
#8 hahaha a cute kid with rosy cheeks that i managed to coerce into giving me a picture when we visited town, which was a long bumpy car ride away from the hotel. check out his cell phone!
#9 me trying to taste snowflakes
#10 :)
#11 ya ya this is Martian trying to be funny… he didn’t realize that he kept stepping on all this horse and yak poo, which i had noticed and cleverly maneuvered away from. sigh baby, study and work so hard also no use if you donno how to avoid yak shit :\
#12 you see!!!!!!!! this is him desecrating perfectly pretty snow by wiping his poo-covered shoes on the snow :( beauty destroyer :(
#13 the resort’s lobby and Martian’s green umbrella
#14 and this is my favourite photo of all :D on the resort grounds, there is this looooong path of stones that leads to one of the resort’s buildings. we were snapping some photos on this path when i looked down and noticed one particular stone that said… banana cake. hahahaha i started laughing like crazy and i kept looking around the resort to find if there were anymore stones that had cake names on them, but no more :(
okay that’s it for pictures :) the Ringha and Kunming trip was one that i really enjoyed. but. oh well.
i’m now in Starbucks Mont Kiara studying with Eeyang again. again!!!!! he has realized that he cannot study with anyone other than me, you see. anyway it’s good to be back here in my SPM hangout. i remember how i used to come here all the time with Waimin during our SPM preparation period cos it was the only Starbucks that opened 24/7.
Mont Kiara.. such memories. missing scrunchies, space invasion, cookies and creme ice cream, The Shining, black see-through curtains, rarely-used kitchens, sharing stories, a thousand bucks left on top of the television… i only wish i could go back to that time. i’d have so much fun; in the midst of all my sulks, i’d have a secret smile.
April 19th, 2008
a few days ago i participated in a race that took 5 HOURS.
and it was mad fun :D
the Nokia N82 Wireless Adventure is a race where eight teams of 1 media member + 1 member of the public will compete to discover Malaysia’s ‘Soul of the Night’ in 5 hours, using only your smarts and the spankingly fabulous Nokia N82. all teams will be given a list of types of nighttime places to go (eg: a place to go drinking at night), and immediately you will have 5 hours to find these places and take pictures of each location and upload ‘em all onto the N82 site.
catch? these places have to be unique and obscure while still attractive; extra points for you if the judges have never heard of these places. the theme if after all, discovering the soul of the night :)
the 4 bloggers invited to participate: me, pop, kim, suanie. all pictures stolen off Facebook and other people :P
Suanie, Kimberlycun, Smashpop and myself were the 4 bloggers invited to form the media halves of our respective teams, and we were to be randomly paired up with one of the 8 finalists who signed up and auditioned for the race.
the 8 teams for the Nokia N82 Wireless Adventure
the night before the race, we were all called in for a briefing at the One World Hotel in 1 Utama, where we were introduced to the Nokia N82 and our fellow contestants. the Nokia N82 is DAMN NICE okay - it’s that phone from the ads where these people who have lost their way use Nokia Maps to find their way to wherever they need to go, and the directions are given out through a voice function? we were to use this Nokia Maps application to aid us in our race (key in any location and the phone gives you a direct route to that location from wherever you are, using A-GPS), and really, this maps application is but a teeny tiny fraction of just how awesome the phone is. i don’t think i’ve ever touched anything as techie as the N82.
best part? we all got to keep the phones :P teehee.
David and i - Team Pink! best team colour everrrrrr!
we were also introduced to our teammates at the briefing. my teammate was David Liow, who blogs at Narrowband.org, and is Shawn Yue’s twin :P sigh yalar i got the most lengchai partner, why am i so lucky. and we make the most awesome team, because while i’m familiar with nighttime places in KL and i can write, David is a total techie who’s a great photographer AND he’s familiar with the NSeries phones cos he uses the N95. hahahahaha! best team ever or what?
i am totally loving Nokia right now because they spoiled us silly during the race. we got to stay the night in these really nice deluxe rooms at the gorgeous One World Hotel, dinner was at 1U’s Delicious, lunch the next day was a flipping 4-course one at Bakerzin :D and did i mention that WE GOT TO KEEP THE N82???
*happy*
flag-off: ready set go!
so after that yummy lunch, we mingled around for a bit, took pictures, were interviewed by the media, did some last minute strategizing, and at 4.30 PM it was flag-off. we got our list of places on the screen, quickly downloaded it onto our phones, and off we went :D this was our list:
1. Discover a good place for live entertainment in the Klang Valley
2. Discover a good spot with a night-view of Kuala Lumpur
3. For games in the evening, where do people go?
4. Discover an eatery that serves great food
BONUS: 5. Discover a place for great evening shopping
i was feeling quite confident because David and i knew exactly which places to go after a quick 10-minute brainstorming in our designated car, which was a sleek Cefiro driven by the world’s nicest driver :P you see, the drivers for the race are not supposed to assist you in the directions. you cant just tell him, ‘we want to go to KLCC’, and expect him to take you there. all teams must give directions to their driver with the aid of Nokia Maps, and even if we give him wrong directions, he’s not supposed to correct us :P but our driver, Ibrahim, was sooooo nice because he said we didnt have to give him directions. hahaha. so all we had to do was sit in the backseat and bicker while our marshal and cameraman tried not to laugh at us :P
the race cars : 2 participants, 1 marshal, 1 cameraman and 1 driver
we made quite good time and covered all our 4 places AND our bonus location within 4 hours, but our problem was uploading the pictures and writing captions quickly. me being the perfectionist i am spent a lot of time agonizing over each and every caption of our 25 photos.. and then we spent even more time resizing the photos and bluetoothing it back and forth between our phones (only one phone gets the SIM card), and then uploading it onto the race’s website.
PANIC!!!!
we arrived back at 1 Utama about 20 minutes short of end-time. i thought with so much time, we would be the first to arrive back (and hence get to use the laptop to upload), but NO. we were like the SEVENTH team to arrive back, and all the laptops were already taken up. at this point, we’d only uploaded and captioned one out of our five albums. sei mou. as we were sitting on the floor frantically uploading all our remaining photos, my infamous stress/angsty mode was out full force oredi. one marshal tried to give me a plate of food and i smacked him away. another one asked me some question about something and i screeched back at him, ‘DONNO DONNO DONNO!!!’. hahahaha cracks me up just thinking about it. sorry ah, kind marshals who only wanted to help me :( sorry David Lian for being so angsty while you helped me connect my phone to the Wifi :( sorry David my partner for being so stressed and panicky in the car and at 1U :( you all still love me wan right?
my stressed face :P
by some stroke of miraculity (is this a word) and because one laptop was finally available, we managed to upload all our pictures in time. after deliberation by the panel of judges who are all experts in their respective fields, Suanie’s team was announced champion. congrats Suanie and Frankie!!! :D AND NO, SMASHPOP, YOUR TEAM WAS NOT RUNNER-UP *angsty*
so Suanie and Frankie won an all-expenses-paid trip to Hong Kong along with RM 1,500 cash each! the rest of us got Robinsons’ vouchers worth RM 500. i’m happy :D SHOES-TIME!!! does Robinsons not stock the best shoes.
it really was such a fun race :) it combined a lot of my favourite things - the city, food, arts, photography, writing, storytelling, friends, discussion and competition ;) i’m so glad i got to be a part of this. thank you David, Eevon, Text100 and Nokia for this amazingly fun experience!!
will put up all the pictures of our team’s 5 locations in the next post :) can guess where we went anot! give you one buck if you can!!
April 8th, 2008
last week, Martian and i made a really unexpected trip to Yunnan, China for easter weekend. one day he just asked me, ‘do you want to go somewhere really really cold?’ and i said yesyesyes with mucho excitement, and that was that. a few days later, we were freezing our butts off in the mountains of Ringha :\ ‘really really cold’ is a description of much deception.
on our way to Ringha, we transited for a night through Kunming, which is about an hour away from Ringha by flight. Kunming is the capital of Yunnan, situated on an elevated plateau, with a pleasant temperate climate all year round and like most of China, very rich in history.
it’s a lovely city with clear blue skies, crisp air and friendly rosy-cheeked locals. good smoky smells of street meat on skewers fill the air and one has to constantly avoid being run over by bicycles or gutsy ladies who try to cut your queue ;) kiasuness notwithstanding, the locals are very friendly even if a little bit shy at first.
we only got to explore Kunming for a day before we had to head to the airport at 5 in the morning the next day. so even though Kunming is home to the Stone Forest - what looks like a really magnificent cluster of sharp stone formations, about 90 kilometers away from the city and a UNESCO heritage site - we didn’t get to travel to the outskirts to marvel at ‘em rocks. we mostly stuck around the city drinking lots of this Chinese tea that Martian really likes - it’s called pu er - and poking around nooks and corners, all while trying to get by with our embarrassing grasp of the Chinese language. Martian is a lot better at it than me though. he conveyed to this one cabbie in marvelous Chinese, with perfect intonation and twist of the tongue, that we needed him to go a little faster because i, the girlfriend who needed the bathroom quite urgently, was very ‘beh tahan’. yah. i really love my boyfriend sometimes.
here are pictures from Kunming, and there are many, but regretfully they have to be kept to a minimum because my host is stingy with bandwidth and i am SWITCHING HOSTS SOON, so until then, it’s going to be less than 30 pictures per post :\ the cruelty.
#1 lots of people cycle in Kunming - university students, working men who wear their briefcases on their backs, mothers who carry their kids in a basket at the front of their bike.
#2 us stopping for lunch at a little noodle shop in Kunming. delicious stuff :) more on Kunming food in a new post.
#3 at the Flower and Bird Market, where there are lots of birds, fishes and other random pets being sold. give you 1 buck if you can guess what that red mess is in front of the lady :\ they were quite the bestseller, with lots of stalls proudly displaying them
#4 this woman just took the pot from the noodle shop we were at, scooped some water out of their tank, and washed her kids’ hands. then she nodded at the shop-owner, the shop-owner nodded back, and that was that. such neighbourliness! and such cute kids!
#5 Martian disturbing a kid who was having a lot of fun playing by himself on this statuary. it was quite an emotional one. in there is a statue of a man holding a gun and also a little girl close to his chest, and the little girl had bronze tears coming out of her bronze eyes
#6 birds at the Bird and Flower Market
#7 cross-stitching is like the fad with the girls manning the stalls at the market. everyone was doing it and totally ignoring customers like us who were interested in purchasing beetles and dwarf hamsters :\
#8 smartly-dressed man selling tempting-looking strawberries
#9 one of those old sewing machines, used by a tailor who operates her business right off the street. it was so cool. my grandmother used to have one of those; i grew up amongst the sounds of that foot-pedal being pushed back and forth and the rapid mechanical tak-tak-tak-tak of the machine pushing thread into cloth
#10 at crossroads
#11 walking to Cui Hu Park
#12 this is Cui Hu Park, a huge park in the middle of the city where locals retreat to for a quiet evening feeding birds or a round of tai chi in the mornings. lots of lovebirds on benches like that one. Martian and i felt so at home!
#13 before this day, i had NEVER seen one of those bags on sticks, except in cartoons and storybooks when i was little. yknow, the bag of stuff that characters take with them when they’re running away from a wicked stepmother or when the hunter needs to go out to the forest to chop firewood?? the Enid Blyton books used to call them knapsacks… are they really called knapsacks?
#14 cherry blossoms at the park
#15 me being bored while Martian pored over the history behind why Cui Hu Park attracts so many gulls and birds :P conversation: “wow baby this is so interesting!!!!!”; “yes baby can we go play with the ducks now”
#16 DUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *HAPPY
#17 me being very impressed by the baby watermelons and baby mangoes. they were SO SMALL! but tasted SO GOOD! we bought some back even though the fruit peddler ripped us off, as is always the case when it’s Martian on the buy-side. hehehehe *runs away
#18 this is Chinese Lee Meng… hahahahahaha
#19 men playing cards or a checkers-like game on the streets is a common sight. i suppose in a country where half of the Internet is blocked, one must turn to the cards for some honest entertainment :\
#20 us shopping at a little grocery store near the hotel. Martian bought these instant noodles that were really really good in the unrelenting cold of Ringha. it irritates me how he always successfully picks all the really nice food, and then he doesn’t let me forget it when i say i wanna have some. “oh, nowwwwwww you want some” -___-
after our Ringha trip, we came back to Kunming for a few hours to catch our flight back to KL. we mostly hung out at this flower market and some nearby streets:
#21 lots and lots and lots of baby’s breath at the flower market
#22 lilies. the flowers here are SO CHEAP. we once did this flower project for Valentines’ Day, and i remember how happy i was to find a supplier who sold us 24 stalks of roses for RM 18. yeah well here in Kunming it’s 24 stalks of roses for RM 5. *depressed*
#23 really big cacti
#24 a dragon flower arrangement on a hearse. it was interestingly morbid. morbidly interesting?
#25 streetside stall selling fishballs. i wanted to eat but Martian don’t let :(
#26 lots of snooker tables in the alleys of Kunming, where men gather around for a game and some smokes
#27 me posing in front of a place that looked so funnily gangster! all the people milling around it looked very gangsterly too. but they ungangsterly allowed lil ol me to mock them with a ladypose. actually i wasnt ladyposing… i was trying to look ruffian. see the imaginary cigarette? :\
#28 i leave you with a final picture of several kids playing by the road. note the little hoodied boy sandwiched on the kiddie-sized automobile - he had a big hole cut out in the seat of his pants. this seems to be a popular local fashion trend among the kids!!! and with such practicality too; instead of wasting the precious seconds it takes for the tyke to search for a bathroom and pull down his pants, all he has to do is squat by the side of the road, and voila! bowel movement at its most convenient! :D
i really liked Kunming. there’s not much to do there, really, but i’m beginning to realize that i have strange affinity towards cities that are covered with graffiti. it must be the vandal in me :D
pictures of Ringha soon :)
April 4th, 2008
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