Posts filed under 'Travel'
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
i am at a loss for words tonight. a million and one things to blog about, but i can’t find seem to find the right degree of concern or earnest. i’m breathing in all this distraction that seems to morph into fatigue as it makes its way through my bloodstream and coils itself around my vital organs. squeeze. sleep. so many wonderfully good news, not yet any bad. but i’m waiting for it to come; precariously, hardened, accepting.
there is a pack of honey dijon-flavoured Kettle Chips on the table. addictive? iconic. i once knew a man who hated chips but loved this particular brand. this man now sleeps in the next room. and i’m going to join him now, because i’m at a loss for words tonight. sleep. and what will tomorrow bring? i have my alarm set for 10.30 a.m: that’s 12 hours after last night’s 10.30 p.m - an hour that was spent at the food court in Changi Airport eating taiwanese rice and this really awful-tasting barley drink and a pill. it was homecoming, all right. we giggled and laughed the entire day, mostly sleeping on the plane or making fun of each other. i really wanted to blog about this really stupid thing that he said during the flower market trip, but i’ve forgotten what it is. memory like a sieve. sucks. maybe when i wake up i will remember.
yknow, i’m blogging in this sleep-deprived state that feels almost like a drunken high. i wouldn’t be surprised if i’m slurring my text. and so i shall take my leave, but not before enclosing herewith a picture of the place we’ve been in over the past 5 days. he took this from the balcony while i was asleep. he crawled back into bed with me and said he wanted to show me something, but i pleaded for 5 minutes more of slumber, and that was that, because we both fell asleep and woke up much much later, when all the snow was gone and we had missed out on a wonderful breakfast spread that we later learned had mantao and these really delicious rosti potatoes.
isn’t it beautiful? we were up in the mountains; couldn’t breathe right for almost three quarters of the time we were there. they call this place Shangri-La, heaven on earth, but heaven isn’t really heaven without altitude-sickness pills, warm gloves and those little oxygen tanks Martian kept inhaling from.
he told me to pack for the winter, but blissfully obstinate as always, i brought 3 short skirts. i thought one pair of jeans or my leggings would be warm clothing enough, but obviously i was drastically wrong. i wouldn’t even have brought my wooly pink jacket if he hadn’t forced me to pack it in on the morning that we left. so yes, i near froze to death. but it was a very nice near-death experience. i caught a glimpse of heaven :)
goodnight now :)
March 24th, 2008
last week, Martian and i went back to Hong Kong together :) when Martian told me he’d be heading back there for work again, i was so excited and totally jumped at the chance to go!! it’s been almost 8 months since Martian left HK, and i really really miss it so much. the last time he was back in HK, he went without me :( so bad. throw cha siew bao at him :(
we were there for about 4 days, effectively 3 since i flew out early on the last day, so we didn’t get to do very much. no Kowloon this time, unfortunately! BUT i did get to spend a lot of time walking around Causeway Bay and Central / Mid Levels on my own whilst the boyfriend did his working thing… and i took many pictures :)
so i’d like to share this little slice of Hong Kong with you all :) also gonna give you a bit of story to the things i used to see in this city that was almost like my second home last year.
#1 the crowd at Causeway Bay. i spent a whole day poking around the bowels of Causeway Bay this trip, something i never got to do much. loads of little boutiques and eateries tucked away in each street! the best tau foo far in the world can be found at Causeway Bay :)
#2 Mister Softee ice cream! Martian and i went to a carnival some time last year, and i was making a lot of noise cos i wanted to eat Mister Softee ice cream, but Martian say not nice T___T i didn’t believe him, so i begged and begged until he went with me to buy a cone. turns out that the ice cream really does suck T_____T i hate how he is right all the time.
#3 a girl buying pearl milk tea and kai tan zhai (egg balls) which are these yummy doughy bally things that you find sold on streets all over HK.
#4 VITASOY!!!!!!!! <3 how i have missed you!!!
#5 this is Times Square. never really liked it much :\
#6 this dessert place is everywhere in HK! half the menu has some form of mango in it. very nice stuff, but not the best. the best is Honeymoon Dessert in Central :) eh baby we forgot to go back there!!! durian vanilla cream :(
#7 AND THEN THERE WAS THIS HUGE CORN COB walking around Causeway Bay giving out flyers. hahahahahaha it looked so funny that i couldnt stop laughing when i saw it. flyers are quite popular in HK (promoters thrust them at your chest every 5 steps you take) so a lot of the time you see very eye-catching promoters on the streets. like this corn cob :P
#8 curry fishballs :) popular HK street food. next to this stall is a steamboat stall, where people crowd around and dip skewered stuff into soup and sauces. exactly like our lok lok! yum.
#9 i later saw that the corn cob was joined by a steak. hahahaha it was a girl steak cos it had eyelashes and lipstick.
#10 shopping with Martian :D because as usual, he didnt bring any clothes for work so we had to go buy some. sheesh.
#11 this is Martian’s friend Eugene. his picture is here because i told him i’d put it on my blog. hahaha he’s so funny. very interested in Malaysian blogs. no i’m not telling you whose blog he reads T_____T make me emo only
#12 i went to Mid Levels just to take this picture of Martian’s apartment :) i just had to. sigh. so many sweet memories.
#13 the DVD rental shop on Robinson Road, where we used to walk down to (it’s really near the apartment) to rent movies. there was one time we rented Season 2 of Grey’s Anatomy and watched a few episodes together <3 i love my boyfriend <3 even if he fell asleep midway through the 2nd episode.
#14 this is The Phoenix, just off the Mid Levels escalator. it used to have a sign saying ‘we are the last bar on the mid levels escalator’ and EVERY SINGLE TIME we go past it, Martian will say, “baby let me show you the last bar on the mid levels escalator”. -_____- EVERY SINGLE TIME.
#15 Chicken On The Run is this deli from which Martian used to tapau his dinner like, all the time. and we used to buy fruits from the stall on the right. when we were fighting one time and i stormed out to cool off, i went to this stall and bought a… pear back for him as a peace offering. hahahaha damn stupid right, i know.
#16 AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
#17 Martian never went back to Chicken On The Run (Ayam Larian wtf) after he discovered Eat Right. it’s this super healthy organic place that counts your calories for you. and because he subscribed to one of the plans at Eat Right, for the longest time Martian had to have ALL HIS MEALS from Eat Right. breakfast, lunch, dinner from Mondays to Fridays. zomg can die i tell you. luckily when i visited on weekends, we didn’t have to go there. Eat Right is too healthy for me :P
#18 Hollywood Road, where you can find lots of antique shops, art galleries and lots of interesting knick knacks.
#19 it’s a common sight to see people sleeping in random places in HK. i actually have a small collection of pictures of these sleeping people :P maybe one day i will put them up.
#20 Pottinger Street, a little street in Central where you can find all sorts of costumes and party wear. this is where i bought my angel wings for RM30! :D
#21 an old tailor on Pottinger Street. so many quaint little businesses like these in HK. such an amazing culture :) remember how our Pudu used to be like that?
#22 a small ribbon stall, where i bought LOTS AND LOTS of cheap but gorgeous ribbon for my crafts the first few times i came to HK
#23 view of the Bank of China and some other buildings from a little park near Pacific Place. sigh i only wish i took more skyline pictures this time around.
#24 a small part of the hip and happening Lan Kwai Fong, but my FAVOURITE part because Ben & Jerry’s is here!!!
#25 on my last night, i just had to go back and take a picture with the corn cob. hahaha. you see! he did a peace sign too!
———-
sigh i really have missed Hong Kong so much. it is such a vibrant, bustling and quirky city; i absolutely love it. am already pining for it even though i just came home a few days ago. ah. Hong Kong will always be Martian’s and my city :)
March 4th, 2008
it’s been a hellish time for me, what with college applications and all. Martian has been really stressed out at work too, so we decided to go for a quick weekend retreat where No Work Is Allowed. what’s allowed : a lot of sun, sand, baileys, a good book, and lotsa lovin’! :D
#1 the beach at pangkor laut
he came back to KL and we drove up to Pangkor Laut to spend a lovely 3 days on the beach and in bed and by the pool just unwinding and basking in total relaxation. i must admit that on the first day i was so antsy about spending the next few days not doing anything about my college applications at all (i actually brought my laptop just in case *ashamed* but i managed to refrain from touching it!!), but after a while of allowing that lovely smell of sunblock to settle in, i was really grateful for the rest and relaxation. and most of all, i was glad to have my boyfriend with me after a horridly long 2 weeks of not seeing him :)
#2 by the pool
#3 finally!! some non-SAT related reading
#4 crawling over to his deck chair <3
Pangkor Laut is gorgeous, people, totally gorgeous. YTL really knows how to run a holiday resort. i've been to both their other resorts in Tanjong Jara and Cameron Highlands, but they are nowhere as lovely as Pangkor Laut. the emerald sea, white sand and comfy beach chairs requisite of a beach getaway are all accounted for. the poolside has a great view of the sea, the horizon and the sea villas. service is top notch; everyone from the GM to the gardeners are always smiling and eager to please. you even have a personal guest relations staff attending to you the whole time! ours was a sweet young lady called Casey who totally layaned my love for diet coke and sent some up to our room :P
#5 the resort at dusk
we stayed in one of the Hill Villas that has a fantastic view of the island and the sea. i loved it to bits :) we even had one of those open bathtubs where we could have long bubble baths in the company of starry skies and cricket sounds, heehee. on our 2nd night, the housekeeping staff saw that we’d ran a bubble bath the night before, and they actually ran us another bath, scattered rose petals all over the water and lit candles for us. sigh <3
both Martian and i have heard such good things about the Pangkor Laut spa, and even though i'm not much of a spa person (i know, i know, what's wrong with me, right?), he managed to convince me to go with him. and i'm soooooooo glad i did, because it was a spa experience unlike any other! it was very frilly with a lot of interesting steps to go through - first a Chinese footrub, then a Malay-style bath in a cold 'river' with a 'waterfall', then a Japanese bath where you sit and scrub yourself on those little wooden stools and use those quaint wooden buckets, then a .. okay lah i'm giving away too many spoilers, aren't i! dowan to say oredi, must maintain the surprise factor!
#6 the Malay-style river bath
after the bath house experience, you pick from many diff types of massages and baths and wraps and treatments and goodness knows what else. crazy wan lah, so many options! i didnt know what to pick so Martian picked me the Balinese massage and the milk bath, which we shared. where much Cleopatra/Marc Anthony debauchery went down. ;)
sigh it was such a wonderful holiday. i wish it could have gone on forever. now it’s back to the daily grind, back to Adobe Acrobat documents and application essays, back to Skype, back to hazy skies and aggravating news in the newspaper, and no more nighttime cuddles :( sniff.
more photos :
#7 the sea villas, located just off the beach and slightly into the sea. very tranquil :)
#8 c’est moi who at the time of phototaking was still rather nervous about not doing any work :P
#9 me and the Martian :)
#10 the beach from my deck chair cos i was too lazy to get up
#11 sans wheelbarrow
#12 i think i should be more worried about where i bring my camera! i put it on this banister on the sea villas to do a selftimer shot, really a windgust away from my camera falling into the sea, and Martian had to go like DONT DO THAT before i realized how dangerous it really was. *shy
#13 very cute old couple reading by the beach
#14 hot father swinging his very cute son around
#15 no, not our room, but the library of the resort! they have all these nice sofas and four poster beds in the library for you to read and surf the internet (free wireless!!!!!)
#16 smooches :D
#17 random peacock that keeps popping up around the resort
#18 making use of the camera’s kickass zoom. the peacock’s name, btw, is Richard
#19 me on one of those really intelligently-made beach chairs. i want one!
#20 Martian jogging
#21 woman tanning to a crisp and loving it!
#22 sigh lovely pangkor laut beach, i still pine for you
all photos were taken by the Panasonic Lumix DMZ-FZ18, which has the most fantasmo optical zoom EVAR. still need to tinker with it a bit before i can fully make proper use of its functions, but even with what little fiddling i’ve done with it so far, the photos still come out great! much thanks to Panasonic for the awesome camera, and Wenqi and Tim of Nuffnang for arranging this :D
Martian is going to HK for work next week. i sooooo want to go because i’ve been missing HK like crazy ever since he moved from there to Singapore. and i was going to go with him, but then i decided no lah i should do the responsible thing and stay home to finish up all this college app stuff. but then i keep thinking about all the things that we used to do in Hong Kong, and i’m just so reluctant to let this trip go :( we’ve always wanted to go back to HK together, and this would be a great chance to do so. sigh. advice, please! 4 days of HK frolicking or 4 days of college app-ing?
November 21st, 2007
it was as if we’d stepped out of the train station and into a world just begging to be explored. the air was dusty, every single wall in the city (not an exaggeration) was graffitied over, personality rose off the sidewalks like vapour, and the people felt real. in Vienna, everything was orderly and squeaky clean, a little bit like a listless museum, but here in Budapest, people moved and shouted and swished their skirts as they knocked back beers.
it was chilly the night we got there, and Sze, our lovely host who has a giant jar of Nutella in her kitchen, told us we were lucky to have the breeze because the predecessing days were sweltering with heat. says Sze in her blog, it was so hot that the old women looked like they were melting into the upholstery of their tram seats. i guess Jethro Tull was being polite when he sang about Budapest being hot.
we spent 2 days in Budapest before we headed back home to KL. like in Vienna, it wasnt enough time to see everything, but we tried our best to cover as much as we could. we went to Castle Hill, walked probably all the bridges that ran across the Danube, went to a couple of bars, traipsed along Vaci Street (where i lost my camera!), and did some poking around at the Great Market Hall. we also ate a lot of goulash. a lot. and saw many homeless people sleeping on the streets using Selgros Cash & Carry plastic bags for pillows.
what we didnt get to do in Budapest : the public baths and Gellert Hill. museums and parks. and all those delightful looking pastries!!!!!
so here are photos taken by me using Martian’s camera. damn nice right the picture quality of his camera. why the person who bought it for him so clever choose camera wan!
#1 at a bar called Spare Key
#2 the moral story behind this sculpture is that man should help his fellow man. i think i missed the point
#3 Martian and Sze talking about dolls. if you look closely at Martian’s back pocket you can see the string of my camera :( sigh, the last vestige of it before it was rudely taken away from us!
#4 kids and their toys
#5 a little bit of Vaci street
#6 lepakers
#7 i am ashamed to say that we jaywalked a lot while in Vienna and Budapest
#8 girls hanging out outside the Great Market Hall
#9 the Great Market Hall, souvenier central
#10 my dad used to bring back these dolls for me every time he went to Europe. till today, i dont think he knows that these dolls actually scare the heck out of me
#11 i left my fingerprints on the dusty walls of Budapest
#12 napping
#13 Budapest road, Budapest girl
#14 while walking to dinner. i had bak kut teh for my starter! seriously.
#15 a bar that was situated in the courtyard of a school undergoing renovation
#16 foyer of Sze’s apartment building
#17 one of those old-fashioned elevators you only see in movies now. so cool right, i know.
#18 our neighbours for a while
#19 this woman had a little tupperware of watermelon cubes in her bag that she kept snacking from
#20 Martian map-reading and me disturbing
#21 train station stillness at Nepliget
#22 graffiti is universal
#23 but there’s a lot more of it in Budapest
#24 reprieve in the summer
#25 the Danube river
#26 at Castle Hill
#27 c’est us!
#28 with Sze who knows the secret to forever looking young
#29 doing our fountain thing
#30 The Pout!
#31 The Pout again!!
#32 stony angst
#33 lengchai tourists
#34 in Malaysia you get arrested
#35 fruit-shopping
#36 sausage-shopping. ‘aeroplane? this, problem! this, no problem!’
#37 goodbye Budapest and sunning myself by the side of the roads as trams rattle past and bicycles whistle by
August 2nd, 2007
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