wAntAn productions: January 2007

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Honeymoon in China 02 - Yuyuan Gardens

Upon arriving to the Pudong International Airport in Shanghai we met up with our local guide Ricky Chen. The tour group was quickly herded onto our tour bus and we were soon on our way to our first real destination in Shanghai, the Yuyuan Gardens. The name for this place contains a little redundancy because the yuan in Yuyuan means garden in Chinese so the English name literally means Yu Garden Gardens :P

You can't see it in the pictures here but there's an actual garden here. The reason why we don't have any pictures of the garden is because we didn't go in. Aside from the admission to the gardens not being free we were together in a tour group which means you never get ample time to jalan-jalan on your own.

Basically there's a small pond in the center of the area and it's surrounded by several pavilions (most of which are restaurants). On the pond there's a 9 curve bridge, which is a common item to find in Chinese gardens.

One of the pavilions.

More proof that Starbucks rule the world.

Skewered meat. A snack you can find all over Shanghai.

ST with a cup of Starbucks Vanilla Frappucino and one of those soup pao thingies.

Lots more snacks. I have no idea what is it they're selling though.

KFC's here. McDonalds is nearby too. Is it just me or does the Colonel in their logo look a little more Chinese than usual?

The pavilion from the first picture, only now it's fully lit up. That's the 9 curve bridge I mentioned about in the front of the building.

Absolutely the most famous Xiao Long Pao restaurant in all of Shanghai! The Nanxiang Mantou Dian.

Long queues all throughout the day. It's absolutely crazy!

Our local guide Ricky, ST and the tour leader Marney Lai.

Unfortunately we didn't have time to try out the famous Xiao Long Pao that day. The queue was too long. But we didn't give up. We did come back here to savour the most famous Xiao Long Pao outlet in Shanghai but that's a story for another time.

posted by wyejon at Tuesday, January 30, 2007 (permalink) | 4 comments | trackbacks

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Florafest 2007 Parade at Putrajaya

Yesterday morning ST and I made our way to Putrajaya, our nation's administrative capital and possibly least densely populated city to catch the Floral Parade. The Floral Parade is one of the highlights of the Malaysian Florafest 2007 organised in line with Visit Malaysia Year 2007. It was hot and crowded and there were a lot of inconsiderate people who kept blocking other people's view of the parade. Nevertheless we still enjoyed ourselves. Enjoy the pictures.

His Royal Highness Yang Di-Pertuan Agong and The Queen.

The first float, showing the highlights of VMY 2007. That's the astronaut on the right, F1 in the middle, KLCC on the left along with the Eye on Malaysia.

The Terengganu float. I wonder if you can still find leatherback turtles there.

The QSR float. Franchisee of the KFC, Pizza Hut and owners of Ayamas. They played the KFC song while this float made its way... advertising at its worst!

Each float is usually accompanied by a school band. Here is the St. John's Institution Cadet Band in action. I'm particularly fond of them because SJI is my alma mater.

The Sarawak float, complete with angry looking hornbills carrying parangs :P

Big Foot! Guess which state this float is from.

Cute kid... but she's a really messy eater :)

CBN (Convent Bukit Nenas) girls if I remember correctly.

The Penang float. Winner of this year's Florafest Parade.

The Malacca float.

My personal favourite. The DBKL float.

Wish I had one of those funny umbrella things.

ST with the Putrajaya float.

For more pictures head here.

posted by wyejon at Sunday, January 28, 2007 (permalink) | 1 comments | trackbacks

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Eye on Malaysia

I'm supposed to continue my posts on my honeymoon but I'm going to interrupt with this post on the Eye of Malaysia; the giant ferris wheel that was built up in record time at Lake Titiwangsa. The wheel itself isn't all that grand... it's smaller than I imagined it would be but high enough to trigger my acrophobia :)

In front of the eye.

Inside one of the gondolas.

ST and myself went up together with ST's colleague and his partner. It's RM15 per person and the ride takes a little over 10 minutes. You get 5 rounds but the view isn't really that grand as you're basically surrounded by darkness.

However we were actually really here for the fireworks display. If I'm not mistaken the fireworks are displayed every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night till the 3rd of February so if you're planning to go see the Eye on Malaysia you should make a move soon!

Fireworks.

Fireworks.

And more fireworks!

The fireworks were great! It's a really enjoyable show and it lasts for about 15 minutes. We asked a guard when the fireworks display would start. He said 9.15pm. However the show only started on 9.45 pm. The fireworks display time is a little random because tonight the show started at about 9.20pm (I could hear it from ST's home near the area).

For more pictures head here.

posted by wyejon at Saturday, January 27, 2007 (permalink) | 0 comments | trackbacks

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Honeymoon in China 01 - Bye Bye KL, Hello China

This is my first post in a very long time. In fact it's the first this year :) Last year was great for me. Some of you may already know this; I got married last year to my darling ST and for our honeymoon we went on a 9 day tour to Shanghai, China and its surrounding towns. I've been more than a little busy with work this year so don't expect to see too many posts from me :P

Anyway like I said we went to China for our honeymoon. It was an 8 day tour departing on the 24th of December till the 31st of December 2006. However we took an additional day's extension in order to celebrate the coming of the 2007 new year in Shanghai.

So the story begins with me and ST waking up real early in the morning to catch the flight to Pudong International Airport in Shanghai. Mom did the driver duty as Joe was fast asleep as usual. We arrived at KLIA quite early then we proceeded to meet up with our tour leader, a really funny guy with an equally funny name; Marney Lai. He helped us check in and left us to board the flight ourself.

Awaiting the skytrain...

and it arrives.

Our plane that day.

Bye bye Malaysia!

Thankfully China isn't that far from Malaysia. The flight to Shanghai would only take about 4 and a half hours. MAS planes are not too bad. You have your own entertainment console and they usually have a nice selection of movies on board. However a cramped flight in Economy class isn't much fun at all.

One other commendable thing about MAS is their generally nice food. On the few occasions that I've flown around it's always been on MAS. I must say the experience is so far so good.

Airline meal #1: Rice with chicken.

Airline meal #2: Mushroom omelets.

The flight to Shanghai was pretty uneventful. We arrived as scheduled. Not surprisingly Shanghai was pretty cold. It was (and still is) winter time after all. We did make preparations for the weather but on some days we were evidently under-prepared :)