nice places i visited.

Huashan

I reckoned this as one of the best places in China that i've toured thus far.. Although it was the longest and most tiresome climb, the cooling weather and picturesque views were more than enough to offset them.

We met some really interesting and somehow, overly enthusiastic locals on our way to huashan and all of us decided to conquear the mountain as a team. Before that, cj planned on taking the cable ride up, but he was conviced by the rest that conquering by foot is more meaningful. And so we did.

Hee i am kind of boliao. my main motive to climb the mountain was to do what every boliao people would do when they visit huashan. =X Theres this belief that if you get a pad lock and engrave your partner's and your name on it, lock it onto the metal chain on the mountain and throw the keys down the cliff, then yar, something good will happen or whatever.
So i bought it! anyways its just for fun's sake la huh.


Theres alot of such metal chains on the mountain and its packed with pad locks!! interesting ehs.










and thats mine~








on the long way up, the views all around were superb! I am glad there were interesting people with us orelse the climb would be a more torturous one. anyways it took us abt 4 hours to get to where the cable car would have taken us to..








our new found frens, and a weird super tall guy in the group =X








do we look like we are infront of a painting? =)








Theres 5 peaks on the mountain and this is the lowest one. and thats the only one that we managed to get to. Its really sad, despite setting off from the hostel at 7, it wasnt enough to finish the mountain. By the time we reached this peak we only had less than 2 hours to get to the 4 other NICER peaks. So spending a nite on the mountain is the correct way to go.. watch the sunrise the next day, get to the different peaks and decend in the late morning. something like that.. =(





the higest point we went to before we had to make a uturn.











despite not attaining our goals, we were still happie at the end of it! hee because we knew we were heading to the muslim quarter for the yummilicous food .. kekes









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Luoyang

We were off to luoyang the very next day. Its a place with alot of noodles and nothing much to eat. but its not as bad and dirty as what some blogs reflected.



This is the hostel that we stayed in hostel. Not authentic anymore but relatively cheap and looks quite like a hotel instead.







This is our room. Doesnt it look like a hotel? With aircon, TV and attached bathroom. its 100rmb per room per nite. fair enough, and good for my aching legs from huashan .







Longmen grottos


A place with alot of niches and buddha statues . IF i aint wrong, the work started in the ming dynasty or something. Pretty cool isnt it, i wonder how the people in the past could do it without using sophisticated machineries that we have today.








This is the budhha with the Victory pose. can you see it?










I rem the guide was saying theres thousands of niches there and many many more buddha statues. But most of the statues were headless because of .. some head thieve or something.







This is the largest buddha statue there~! and luckily the head wasnt stolen. =)







And i love this the most amongst the rest! =) freaking hideous~ love it.








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Jingshanlin - Simatai greatwall

Back in Beijing, we went to quite a few places and this is one of them- the greatwall. Unlike the one that dorothy and i went to the previous time, cj and i trekked the wilder section of the greatwall. It is mostly unrestored, pretty dilapidated, but absolutely breath-taking.

You can see from the above pictures that theres absolutely no one on the wall! The wall almost belonged to us that day, except for some angmohs and irritating touts on the way.

we were mostly walking on such broken tiles

Broken walls

Broken watch tower

had to hold on to my cap because of the
super strong wind. theres totally no walls here..

doh, the wall-less greatwall.

Dispite some HUGE hiccups we had on our way there, and till now i am still having phobia on MIYUN bus station, this part of greatwall is really worth going. thumbs up~

Beautiful Xi'an =)

Sorry people i havent been updating my blog for quite awhile. I shall devout a morning's time to do it now! Went to quite a few places for the past weeks. Xi'an and Luoyang with cj, and Datong with the foreign students. Its time for me to stop touring so much and go for lessons. yeyy

Xi'an


Pardon me for my bad photog skill again, but i hope ya guys can figure out what this is. =)=) i was on my hard sleeper bed on the train to Xi'an. I found it comfy enough, clean and surprisingly soft. And the train ride was super smooth! managed to sleep thru the nite~




There are the bottom,middle and top sleepers . We had the top. Its supposed to be the cheapest because we really had to climb to get up, and the headroom is super limited. But we didnt need that kind of space since we were going to sleep anyways.






we reached Xi'an at around 9 in the morning. The whole city is surrounded by this citywall behind me. Somehow it seemed quieter, more peaceful, safer, and less crowded than beijing here.







Cj infront of the Shuyuan Youth hostel that we stayed in for the 3 days! Its really super authentic =)












The interior!! super authentic right? Nice and cozy siHeyuan that i super love!! The staffs are QUITE frendly, but if you are an angmoh, the staffs will be SUPERDUPER frendly. Serious >_<". Although we stayed at the basement, it wasnt that bad at all, with clean clean clean common toilets.

This is our 4 men mixed dorm, for 30rmb a bed. ( thats $6) and the two other roommates were non-existent, they didnt appear at all, hence we had the whole room to ourselves~





My bed! I see you my HANDPHONE!! 2 years and 3 months of absolute dependence, i miss you so much! =(






The one place that every tourist visits in Xi'an is the terra cotta army museum. I have been intrigued by this place since i was young, and after about a decade, i finalllly made it there~~

rolls and rollls of Qin's soldiers








I found out that this greyish colour aint their usual colours. But after they got unearthed and exposed to air, they got discoloured. So now, they stop digging or something until they discover a way to counter that.
And see, they are in bits and pieces, it is after the jigsawing that they become like the ones in the previous pic.














And seriously, all of them have different features and expressions.
Interesting~











I found my fav solider in the mass!!!! the one with the strange long arms and extremely small head.






Us with the terra cotta!







After terra cotta army, we rushed back to the hostel to attend the dumpling making party~ This is partly why i chose the hostel because they have this party every friday! And i am glad cj came a day earlier so that we could make it for the party. Its kinda fun, learning how to make and roll the dough. But after awhile of serious learning, i got back to the usual me and started making candy, snail, spaceship shaped dumplings =x


This uncle announced that he had got a gigantic dumpling! and thats my spaceship!! haha and he said it is the best dumpling he had ever eaten.
But seriously, all the dumpling tasted like crap. i have never tasted anything that bad before.




Sooo.. after eating a few dumplings, Cj and I went to the Muslim quarter which is just a stone's throw away from the hostel. AND!! There are duper alot of yummilicious and fattening fooooooodddd.
Nice like mad.
Here, he was having a sweet bean paste cake thingy. nice nice nice nice!!



and then we had some mutton and beef satays that cj loves alot =)
abit too spicy for my stomach though.






But the best thing had yet to commeee..! Presenting to you this restaurant!! In mandarin, its called 贾三. Dont be intimidated by the posh entrance. we ALMOST didnt go in because we thought its gonna be exorbitant. but, tell you, its super cheappp.
smile all over~







This is the super nice and cheap soup dumpling that we had there.
The juice would oooooze out into ya mouth with just a tiny bite. and one set of 10 only costs 6rmb >_<" (thats $1.20) So please people, if you ever go to Xi'an, visit this restaurant.


HAAppPPy me!








And this is nice too. its called yang2rou4pao4mo3. some bread in mutton soup. anyways, you need 2 nites to taste most of the nice food in the muslim quarter.. yey =)






And then this is nice toos. =X

its called yellow parsimmon cake, or however you spell it.






SUper the fattening. deep fried~









aye, more on beautiful xi'an will be coming up in the next entry =)