It was early in the morning of 25th September 2010, if I still can recall correctly. Together with my cousin - Seyton as we all used to called him, we took a cab to the airport 05:30 in the morning. Together, this two very exciting lads boarded the 9am flight bound to Chengdu, China. This trip was planned sometime ago (about 1.5 years before) and both of us were so happy that we both were able to make it at last.

Our plane landed at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport around 2pm. After going through routines like security custom screening and collected our checked in baggage, we head straight out from the arrival hall looking for transport to down town Chengdu. After a quick check with the information counter, we decided to catch a airport bus bound to city. As usual, we always choose for the one of lower cost as we have to work under a very tight budget. The bus fare was around RMB 10 if I still can recall correctly and this should be the cheapest transport you can get to the city center from Shuangliu International airport.

The journey to the city was taking about 35-40 mins by airport transit bus. As we were approaching the city, we were caught in a traffic jam and our bus was crawling slowly towards the city. We found ourselves stuck in a very bad traffic jam and our bus barely moved for 10 minutes. The driver was getting very frustrated and shouted at all the passengers on board that he gonna to dropped us all off the next junction. He claimed that we were all about 15 minutes walk distance to the agreed drop off point - TianFu Square from the junction ahead. Without a choice, we were forced to get down from the bus at an unknown street off Shuang Long Men. Look as blur as we could have been, we started to walk towards the TianFu Square as directed by the driver. As we walked and walked, going through 'Hu Tong's (small roads) for about 30 mins; I started to question if we were on the right direction. I then tried to grab a local to ask for direction to TianFu Square. He confirmed that we were on the right direction and TianFu square is around 20 minutes walk ahead. Without further delay, we walked towards the given direction. The only thing on my mind during that moment was to reach the hostel as soon as possible to drop off  my heavy backpack. Oh my gosh, my back was really hurting!


After almost an hour walk from where we were dropped off by the driver, we finally reach the famous TianFu Square and I was so relieve~"phew", at least we know that we were on the right direction to the hostel. After another 15 mins walk, we finally reach the hostel - Lazy Bones Hostel. We quickly check-in to the hostel and grab the key to our room and drop the heavy backpacks and head out to start our journey for the first day.


Chengdu, as described in most of the travel books, it is a very "laid-back" city that emphasizes on culture and relaxation. As a result, there are lots of parks of green spaces in the city center thus making Chengdu being ranked as one of the most livable mega-cities in China. And when we talk about Chengdu's culture, the first thing that pops up would be their Tea Culture. In Chengdu, tea drinking culture is seen as part of the daily lifestyle of the locals. This is comparable to the coffee culture in most of the western countries like US. Tea houses are plentiful in the city, drinking tea and playing Mahjong is the way how locals relax. To get better understanding of their tea culture and ways of relaxations, there is not better place to go but to the People's Park (Ren Min Gong yuan).


As it was only quarter past 4, we decided to head to the People's Park which is located at the west from TianFu Square. We entered the park from the eastern gate. Right at the entrance, there was a monument built in memory of the SiChuan armies killed defending their land from intrusion armies from Japan.

We were walking towards the west gate along the garden path. There were plenty of tea houses within the park and as to experience the Chengdu tea culture, there is no better way than having a cup of tea at one of these tea houses. It costs us RMB 36 for two cups of tea and a pack of melon seeds. We were relaxing in the park with a cup of tea in our hands, truly Chengdu style!







































































After the tea break, we continue to walk deeper into the park. We then reached at the community area where most of the locals were doing leisure and sports activities such as singing karaoke, dancing and some even practicing Chinese calligraphy art using a big brush and water to write on the floor. Man, that was just awesome!


























































We went out from the park from the western gate to our following desitnation, the Wide and Narrow Alleys (Kuanzhai Xiangzi - "Kuan" means wide, "Zhai" means narrow and "Xiangzi" is the alleys). It was about 15 minutes walk away from the park. Here, you can see the historical remains of the old Chengdu City which is now mostly renovated and reopened with lots of restaurants, bars, coffee shops and souvenir shops selling touristy items.
 













Just a little history about the alleys - "The Wide and Narrow Alleys are an area of ancient streets preserved from the Qing dynasty (1616AD-1912AD) in Chengdu. The Wide and Narrow Alleys are the epitome of the old life of Chengdu City. The historical and cultural area is composed of three parallel ancient streets and complex of courtyard houses. The three ancient streets are Kuan Xiangzi, Zhai Xiangzi and Jing Xiangzi. Wide and Narrow Alleys, together with Daci Temple and Wenshu Monastery are the three historical and cultural blocks under protection.".













After dinner, we decided to head back to hostel for early rest as we have booked a trip to the DuJiangYan Dam and the Mt. QingCheng. It was another 30 minutes walk back to hostel. This round we opted to take a different route from where we came from earlier. Walking passed some small and dark alleys with some old shops with red neon light on stating there massaging service. Well, don't get me wrong. This ain't the red light district in Chengdu but one of the lanes in Chengdu where massage services are offered by the blinded one. No comment on this as we did not try it out :).

First day in Chengdu, with a tired body due to lots of walking, I was heading to bed with a smile on my face, "Welcome to Chengdu!", a soft tone that was whispering to me...



Map below marks the places we been through on our very first day at Chengdu.


View Chengdu - Day 1 in a larger map

It was about 2 months after our wedding in late July 2011. Looking back at last couple of hectic months where both of us were so busy doing preparation for our wedding, we were indeed very much exhausted. So a weekend getaway was our top priority and there we decided to go for a culinary trip to Penang while celebrating my coming birthday together!

Penang, this is a place which is famous for it's street food (or hawker food as some other would like to call it). For this post, I ain't gonna document much about the journey or places we visited over there at Penang. The main focus would be solely on the food, as every food lover will definitely find this post mouth watering :)! Well, here we go ~~ Bon Appetite!

So, let's get started with something light first.
First stop, we dropped by Penang road where it is in fact a famous road for it's street food. There were so many hawker stalls lining up by both sides of the road, serving great local Penang food ranging from porridge, noodles, rice dishes and desserts! It is definitely a place where your stomach will be "fighting" against all the available food and it will only stops when your stomach is full and can fill in nothing more!

1. The pork porridge.

2. Fried Carrot Cake with shrimps and cockles!
















3. Penang style prawn noodles (Harmee).
















Next, we move on to Ayer keroh. This place is famous for not only the Chinese temple (Kek Lok Si) but also for it's Assam Laksa (rice noodle in sour & spicy soup)! This is the type of noodles soup that you are either love it our you hate it. Well, for such an Asian tongue like me, this noodles soup was like food from heaven for me :)! One mouthful bite of noodles with chuck of shredded fish fillet, together with a good twist between sour and spiciness, it was all well balanced up with the sweetness of the fermented prawn sauce. A perfect combination I would say! So it will always ended up with bite after bite and you will keep asking for more! It makes me feel hungry by just looking at the picture itself :).

4. Assam Laksa

It was almost one whole year past since my last visit to the city or Chengdu, China. With lots of stuff going on all these while, been giving myself too many excuses for not updating new post to this blog :).

Well as for this round (my trip to Chengdu), it was kind of different to the rest of my previous trips though; mainly because I was traveling with a new travel partner - my elder cousin brother, Seiton. I can still recall that the first time I traveled with my cousin was 18 years ago. Back then, I was a 10 years old kid. My cousin was traveling west to the capital (Kuala Lumpur) for during his school break. That was the first time with my parent's permission, I was traveling west together with him and that marked our very first trip traveled together (I can still remember every detail of the trip bro!).

And now 18 years later, we planned another trip together and this time our destination was Chengdu. Reason behind that we chosen Chengdu was that we were looking for a trip with more exploration rather than sight seeing in the city. We were not paired together for the whole journey of this trip but rather half of it. My cousin joined me for the first half of the trip (5 days) and I was traveling alone after that. Our planned travel itineraries included places like LeShan Buddha, ErMei Mount, DuJiangYen Dam and also the most famous travel destination in nearby Chengdu - the JiuZaiGou Park. But due to poor planning, we were hit hard by the long break holidays in China where most of the hotels were fully booked. Tours to some of the places mentioned were fully booked and that hit hard on our planned itinerary though. Well, I guess I better keep those details to coming new posts.

Just to mark the start of my coming new posts, here I present to you the picture of the famous LeShan Buddha as the entry to my coming blog posts about my trip to Chengdu.

Welcome to Chengdu!

After visiting the Great Wall of China (Badaling), we took a returning bus backed to city which dropped us off at the same station we came from on that morning. It was just around 3:30pm in the afternoon and we have got no more plan for the second half of the day. I took out the travel guidebook we bought earlier at Wang Fu Jing Bookstore and trying to look for places to go.

I flipped to the page that it was writing about the Olympic Park and without a second thought I pointed to Elaine that we just go to the park for a walk and photo shooting as well :). Boarded the underground's train, we were heading straight to the Olympic park station which is located right at the entrance to the Olympic park.




























We arrived too early at the Olympic park station, my clock was just 5 minutes to 4pm. Well, as the stadium's light will only be turned on after sunset, we have nothing much to do but just simply walking around the park waiting for the sun to go down when the lights will be on. That was said to be the best moment to snap a couple of photos of the stadiums as the lighting was designed to make the stadium appears as 3D right in front of our eyes especially the Aquatic Stadium - The water cube.

After moment of slow walk loitering around the park, we were constantly battling with the strong wind which blow right on our face with the winter chill. I could stand it no more thus we headed to the nearest Mac Donald for a cup of hot coffee and some chips :). Wow, that was like resurrecting my body from the frozen death out there.

Tick ... tick ... tick... wait... wait ... wait ... Yes!!! My watch beeps for 7pm finally!!! We headed out and below are those stadiums that were dressed up with the beautiful lights and presenting their very best right before our eyes!!! Brilliant concrete art works from the Chinese.















As sun sets, the temperature started to drop lower and lower. Worried that it might be snowing again as predicted by the weather forecast we read that morning, we decided to head back to Xuan Wu Men (the area we rented our apartment). Before we walk down to the undergrounds to catch a train, we caught a old couple with westerner's look and asking for their help to take a picture for both of us. My first instinct was to communicate with them in English but to discover that they don't really get what I meant until I show them my camera and pointed to the stadiums as background and repeating the word "photo ... photo" :). Opps, I found out that I was speaking English to Russians LOL ... But well, with my very limited knowledge of sign language, they finally got what I meant and took a beautiful picture of Elaine and Myself as below.

Спасибо, mates!

It was a Monday morning at Beijing with light snow over the night. We woke up from bed to find out that the road outside was covered with a blanket of snow and I was so excited and got myself changed to rush out from our rented apartment to get my first feel on real snow :). It was kind of like a "touchy" moment for me as I never really experienced with snowy weather before as back at home it is summer throughout every seasons of the year.

I recalled that the other night before when we were discussing the plan for Monday, I was out of idea where should we head to as there are so many interesting areas that I wanna visit to. After some time of thinking, we decided to visit to the Forbidden City Museum taking advantage that it was a Monday morning and everyone should be at work or school. So there should not be a huge crowd gathering at the place visiting the museum, ~~ I kept my fingers crossed (it was in fact damn crowded that morning and I can hardly get a good shoot on the views I was taking). So we took the subway to the QianMen station (前门站) right opposite the TiananMen Square and headed towards entrance to the museum. 

As usual, let's start with a little introduction to - The Forbidden City. It is called the Palace Museum now, occupies the central part of Beijing municipality and was the imperial palace of Ming and Qing dynasties. It's construction began in year 1406, and forming the very heart of Beijing it is China's most magnificent architectural complex and was completed in year 1420. The huge palace is a compendium of imperial architecture and a lasting monument of dynastic China from which 24 emperors ruled for nearly 500 years. The symbolic center of the Chinese universe, the palace was the exclusive domain of the imperial court and dignitaties until the 1920s.

The Forbidden city itself is divided into two parts: the outer court and the inner court. The outer court is the place where previous emperors handled court affairs and held different ceremony whereas the inner court was where the emperor lived and handled day-to-day work. The imperial garden lies at the north of the inner court forming a natural garden with green pined, exotic flowers, rate stones, ponds and waterside pavilion.

The Forbidden City was not fully opened to the public until year 1949 after the founding of the People's Republic of China. It became one of the key unit of preservation of cultural relcs in 1961 and UNESCO included it in the List of World Heritages in year 1987. Since then, the Forbidden City has radiated the vigour of it youth and become the cultural heritage of mankind.

The Outer Court:
Meridian Gate, it is the main entrance of the Forbidden City. There are 5 high towers with double eaves on it, very lofty and magnificent. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, a ceremony would be helf here whenever generals were sent on an expedition, the army returned in triumph. Prisoners were presented or ever executed here.













Inner Golden Water River, five marble bridges symbolizing the five cardinal virtues of Confusion ism, cross the Golden Water which flows from west to east in a course designed to resemble the jade belt worn by officials.













Unfortunately during our visit, it was all FROZEN! No water was flowing!















 The Chinese Lions:
Pairs of lions guard the entrance of halls. The male is portrayed with a ball under his paw, while the female has a lion cub.













Marble Carriageway
The central ramp varved with dragons chasing pearls among clouds was reserved for the emperor.































Hall of Supreme Harmony
The largest hall in the palace, this was used for major occasions such as the enthronement of an emperor. Inside the hall, the ornate throne sits beneath a fabulously colored ceiling.


















The Inner Court:
Moving forward from the Hall of Supreme Harmony, we will be entering the compound of the Inner Court.













Palace of Heavenly Purity
The Palace of Heavenly Purity was the emperor's bed chamber and for the reception of officials.






























Towards the end of the inner court after passing by a few of the empresses bed chambers, we were arriving at the Imperial Garden.













Imperial Garden was first built in 1417. It was designed in such a unique style that it's luxuriant trees and flowers, well spaced to present a beautiful atmosphere of soleminty and dignity. It is considered foremost of the gardens in the palace.













After visiting the Imperial Garden, we chose to take the eastern route to visit eastern part of the palace while walking back to the entrance where we came from. We were so surprised to discover that there is such a western style of building exists in the palace - The Palace of Prolonging Happiness.
 
The Palace of Prolonging Happiness, it was constructed in year 1420. It served as the bedchamber of the imperial consorts. In 1845, the palace was destroyed by fire. It was not reconstructed until 1909 with the hall of Water, a three storey building on the original site of the burnt Palace of Prolonging Happiness.













The temparature was dropping to the freezing point and we couldn't stand much longer after our visit at the Palace of Prolonging Happiness. We walked quickly along the eastern wall leading towards the outer court and eventually the exit. Phew... I can still remember that it started to snow when we reached the exit gate and I can still remember the feeling of the cold wind chilling down through my spine down to my toes in such a cold temparature. Much of the areas around the palace had no heating and we were pretty much like visiting a museum within a giant freezer =_=".

A tip to visitors, you will find that there are a lot of halls along the easter and western side of the inner and outer courts. They are actually museum displaying some historical artefacts used previously in the palace such as some of the emperor's belonging as well as empresses accessories. It is worth to spend your time to have a close eye on these artefacts to understand more about the emperors life within the palace. Unfortunately, we were not able to spent too much time there to check on these artefacts as the weather was too cold for us really!

Let’s just starts with a brief history about the Great Wall of China (GWC), it is a symbol of China’s historic detachment and sense of vulnerability. The Great Wall snakes through countryside connecting over deserts, hills and plains for several thousand miles. Originally, it was a series of earthen ramparts built by individual states. These individual ramparts were connected after the unification of China under the great emperor of China - Qin Shi Huangdi. Despite impressive battlements, the wall ultimately proved ineffective; it was breached in the 13th century by the Mongols and then, in the 17th century by the Manchu.

Today, only selected sections of it’s crumbling remains have been restored and opened for tourists visit. A trip to the Great Wall of China is a must for any visitor to Beijing, so it is the same for us. During our last visit to Beijing in the month of spring festival 2010, we fulfilled one of our travel dreams by climbing up the Great Wall of China (Badaling section)! Woohoo, I can guarantee that your visit to the GWC would not disappoint ya and it is worth the hassle traveling out from the city to countryside for this historical site.

The ticket counter at the entrance to Badaling Great Wall Section:

A little tips for visitors:

1. The wall is exposed to the elements so be prepared for all outcomes: wear layers of clothing and a waterproof top, apply suncream.
2. Bring plenty of water.
3. The wall can be very steep in places, so make sure you have strong footwear with a good grip such as hiking boots or though waterproof runners.

As we visited the great wall during February - the month of Spring festival, the mountains were still covered with a blanket of snow and the view was simply amazing! The downside of visiting during early Spring is that the weather was so harsh with constant strong winds freezing your body and the blanket of snows covering the stairs up to the watch tower were making it so slippery and very dangerous when walking down from the wall.













The Watch Tower was Ming’s addition. It served as signal towers, forts, living quarters.
































Yes!!! We had conquered the Great Wall!

















How to travel to Great Wall of China:
Nowadays, most of the hotels will be able to organize a trip to the GWC for you. However, the trip is usually combined with any unwanted diversions planned to cloisonne workshop, jade factory or Chinese medicine clinics. To avoid such trip, there is another option for you to visit the great wall (Badaling section) by public transport. By taking a public transport there, you can have a more personalize visit as you can spend as much of time as you can over there if only you don't miss the last bus back to the city!

So here is a little guideline on how to catch a public bus to the GWC (Badaling section):
1. Take the Line 2 Subway to - Ji Shui Tan station (积水潭). You will find a notice board outside of the station showing you the way to the De Sheng Men Arrow Tower (德胜门箭楼) bus station.

















2. Walk towards the east side after getting out from the station to De Sheng Men Arrow Tower (德胜门箭楼).

View Larger Map

3. Take the bus 919 (Badaling express) at the nothern side of the Arrow Tower. Please ask the driver to confirm the bus 919 you are boarding is an express bus to Badaling Great Wall. One way ticket to the Badaling Great Wall costs RMB 12.

















4. The bus will go northwardly on Badaling Express Way and shall reach to the Great Wall entrance around 1.5 hours ride. The bus will drop you off here and you will have to walk your way up to the entrance.