China Travel Log: 12 – 19 June 2005
Day 0: 11 June
Singapore – Shanghai
1:15am flight on Singapore Airlines to Shanghai International Airport.
After settling into my seat, I took my PDA out and set it to “flight mode” (Bluetooth, WiFi & GSM off). It hung on me, and resetting didn’t work. So I removed the battery and put it back. Oops. That was a hard reset. Everything on my PDA was wiped out. I spent so much time looking for programs to bring along for my China trip, like a currency convertor, and a nifty English-Chinese translator. All gone! 
I can’t tell you how much I hated Microsoft then.
Day 1: 12 June
Shanghai – Hangzhou
Arrived in Shanghai in the morning. Once we cleared customs and our tour group was gathered together, we started on our bus ride to Hangzhou (Hang-chou) *.
At about 9:30am, we stopped at Jiangxi (Chiang-hsi) for a rest stop. The tour guide bought us rice dumplings (zongzi; tsung-tzu ) as it was dumpling festival. It was interesting, and different from what we eat in Singapore. The rice was very gooey, and fatty pork meat was used. The fat was “melt-in-your-mouth”… Mmmm…
4:56pm: Just finished sight-seeing at Huagang Park (huagang guanyu; literally “View Fish in the Flower Harbour”) and West Lake (xihu). Was rather disappointed. Although the scenery was nice, there were just too many tourists, making it hard to find a good photo opportunity.
7:47pm: We were brought to watch this show called “Romance Of The Song Dynasty” in the Song City theme park. Once the show ended, all I could think of was “Wow!” It’s a fine example of “sensory overload”: the lights, the sounds, the splashes, and even the action! It features dancing and acrobatics, mixed in with sword fighting. Words can’t describe it. If you go down to Hangzhou, you have to see this show.
The day is not complete without a shot of the view from my hotel room.
* The most recognised name will be given first, followed by the name in pinyin and Wade-Giles, where applicable, in brackets. For example, “Hangzhou” is already pinyin, so in brackets, I only include the Wade-Giles names.