end of summer and here comes autumn....

New academic year is starting real soon.
This marks the end of my k-drama and k-show marathon and also the end of part of my laziness accumulated over 4 months.

I shall not eat fast food for 1 year if possible lol.
Usually I will eat once in more than a month.
However for the past 1 month, I have eaten a total of 7 or 8 TIMES!
Unbelievable.

Sawadee ka Hatyai~ tuk tuk

One week after I came back from China, I went for a 4N3D trip to Hatyai, Thailand.
It has been a long time since the last time I went there.
We travelled there by bus on Friday night and arrived at the M'sia-Thai border early the next morning.

Nothing much to do during the whole trip other than visiting a few temples and getting to the market to buy stuff.
Just have to hop on a tuk-tuk and tell the driver to head towards the market or wherever.
20 baht per person or slightly cheaper for a group.

Not many pictures taken. Nothing really interesting.

The very first meal in Hatyai. Kuey chap.

The 'bian ket' and 'soap pish' makes me LOL





Setting the 9 birds freeeeee



Flower bouquets made from leaves

Floating market

Colourful sushi

110811-110818 Hunan

A post supposedly made few weeks back.
Another China trip. The destination this time is Hunan province. West Hunan to be more specific.

Day 1 (KL-Changsha)

The travelling time itself took up almost the whole day.
Left house before the sun rises and only arrived in Changsha, Hunan at dinnertime.
A bit of delay in between during the transit in Guangzhou.

A view of Guangzhou from the plane

Digestive biscuit from China Southern Airline

The 'gate' to the restaurant where we had dinner

The exterior of the restaurant

Day 2 (Changsha-Shaoshan-Changde)

Almost everyday have to spent few hours on the bus travelling to another place/city.
Shaoshan is the birthplace of Mao Zedong.

Bronze square

Bronze statue of Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong's house

Have no time to go across the pond/lake for a full shot of the house. This is all I could get.

Have to queue up for a short tour into the house. Nothing much to see though.

Beautiful green paddy field

Lotus plantsss

Isn't it cute? hahaha

Day 3 (Changde-Fenghuang)

Changde poem-engraved wall. 3km long O.O



Description of the wall

If I didn't remember wrongly, it's the journey from Changde to Fenghuang that we went through more than 20 tunnels.

Fenghuang (Phoenix) town is an ancient town with a history of over 1300 years.
The town is beautiful and has those olden days feel but it's very dusty.
I think it can be considered as 'kawasan pedalaman'. The narrow road to get there is under maintenance. More than 1 hour of bumpy ride.
A one day stay is too short to see everything. And the extremely hot weather isn't helping.

Hong qiao (Rainbow Bridge)





Freaky dude








Road signs

Look at the amount of people. Totally crowded.

Toilet hahaha

Crazy people joining the long queue under the hot sun for a boat ride down the river



You will end up in the river if you're not careful





Didn't notice that sculpture when the photo was taken. It just happen to be there lol








The locals washing clothes in the river

Back to the hotel to rest, have dinner and wait for the night to come.
The view is different at night. Modernised with all the bars open for business and all the deco lighting.
That day is the 14th day of the 7th lunar month - hungry ghost festival. So, the air is quite hazy from all the burning of incense and stuffs.

It's somebody's birthday and here's the birthday cake

All the stalls are selling similar food

Drinksss

The entrance of the bridge beautifully lit at night



















Crossing the bridge again. More people at night.

Day 4 (Fenghuang-Zhangjiajie)

The bus went through the same bumpy road to leave Fenghuang town and head towards Zhangjiajie, the main destination.
More mountains appearing along the way.
Zhangjiajie has quite a lot of Korean tourists. =D

First we visited Tianmen Mountain.
We went to the peak by cable car. The world's longest passenger cable way on high mountains.
Then, we came down to the middle of the mountain and took the bus through the road with 99 turnings to Tianmen Cave.

The hole is Tianmen Cave

Heaven-Linking Avenue with 99 turns. The route by bus to Tianmen Cave.

If you have fear of height then there are some places you couldn't go to







Going round and round



Tianmen Cave

Time to do some leg exercise. Climbed up the 999 steps to the opening.
Nothing much to see actually. hahaha
Only 11 out of 43 of us went to the top. The others just sit at the resting area at the bottom.

The steps get steeper as they approaches the top

Most tourist attraction sites have folk costumes for you to wear for taking photos but I've never tried them

The mountains look like chocolate chips lol

That night we had buffet dinner.
The desserts are yummy. Only snapped photos of some of them.

At night, we watched an outdoor musical show-Fox Fairy of Tianmen Mountain in the valley of Tianmen Mountain itself. The spotlights for the show are located on the mountains.

The overall stage is amazing with the mountain backdrop. The picture doesn't show it.

The full moon chose to appear from behind the mountain exactly when the performance ends making everyone wonder whether the moon is real or fake.

Day 5 (Zhangjiajie)

First we went to Li Jun Sheng Sand and Stone Painting Exhibition. This guy uses sand and stone and those little things which others treat as junk to produce his beautiful paintings. All his works are based on Zhangjiajie's scenery.

This photo was accidentally taken since photography is prohibited

Then we visited Baofeng Lake and went for a boat ride. Had to climb some stairs to go up up up to the surface. The lake is really deep.

When we got off the boat we have to walk down these stairs. It shows how deep the lake is.

Chinese giant salamander

A scene from 'Journey to the West' was shot here

Next, we headed to Wulingyuan Scenic Area. They have their own special buses up the mountain and crazy drivers. I almost flew off my seat once when the bus took a turning =.="

The bus station

We got off at the cable car station and rode on the cable car to Tianzi Mountain @ Avatar Mountain. They compared the Tianzi mountain to the mountains in Avatar but whether the movie is based on this I'm not sure.

Helong statue

Then, we took the bus to Yuanjiajie. Still in Wulingyuan.
The bus driver was really crazy and driving recklessly. Makes me dizzy.

A stall selling Korean walnut snack

World's No.1 Bridge. Whatever that means.

The thing with all these mountains is that you can see really really deep to the bottom but never see the land.

The floor of the bridge can see all the way to the bottom



They even have this built there

Then we went on Bailong lift to get to the bottom. The lift holds 3 records:

• Highest totally exposed outdoor lift with an height of 336 metres.

• Highest dual level sightseeing lift with vertical running height of 326 metres.

• Passenger lift with the largest carrying capacity ( 46 persons) and quickest speed of 3 metres/sec.

The glass window of the lift allows you to see the outside as the lift descend. Unfortunately, the Korean aunties and uncles blocked the view.

Day 6 (Zhangjiajie)

We returned to Wulingyuan scenic area again and visited the Golden Whip Stream. Not much water in the stream. Probably dried out.

Some unknown men smiling there

Somebody's underwear hanging there



This old man can write Chinese words upside down. So skillful. And his writing is beautiful.

This spot is exceptionally cold. That's why the paper written 'Natural air-cond'. I didn't realise those round round things at the back are watermelon. I thought they are rocks. hahaha

Then we went to Ten-mile Art Gallery. Not a real art gallery. It's just a name.

We then went to Longwang Cave (Dragon King Cave).

This looks like a corn so much



Water is constantly dripping at the round part which appears to look like a monk's head hence, the name ' Monk Showering'

Next, we went to Chinese Giant Salamander Museum. It's quite interesting with things to play with.

And at night, we watced another musical show.

Day 7 (Zhangjiajie - Changsha)

Nothing much to do. We went to a few shops and made our way ack to Changsha after lunch.
After dinner, we went to Huangxing Road for shopping.

Day 8 (Changsha-KL)

Local snack - Tang you baba. Basically it's rice cookie(?) fried using sugared oil. It's sweet and quite nice but too oily.

Changsha's smelly tofu. Some of those I saw in the roadside food stalls are black in colour. Ugly appearance.

After lunch, we headed for the airport to return to KL.

With the China tour guide

On the plane from Guangzhou to KL, I sat beside a China man and he asked me to help him to fill in his arrival card. He kept asking me some questions, and called me '小陈'.

Anyway, it's not nice to go during summer. The temperature reaches up to 40 deg. C during daytime and up to 33 deg. C at night.

It's noticeable in these few years that China has been taking action to conserve energy.
At night a lot of the buildings are quite dark.
Even in summer when the temperature is higher than in malaysia, most of the places including hotel lobbies don't switch on the air-cond. Let you truly experience the heat.
Probably the energy is insufficient for the large population.