Sunday, May 27, 2007
Day 07 - Outskirts of Chengdu / 10:06 am
Day 07 - Chengdu City
01 May 2007 (Tues) *Labour Day*
Temp: 17 - 31c
Today is PRC's Golden holiday, known as the "wu-yi jie" (May 1st festival; Labour Day), a golden holiday that lasts 1 week to entice domestic shopping to boost local economy. Indeed it is very conspicuous as the whole stretch of road outside my hotel, aka the mobilephone street, have transformed to a street carnival with every shop having tentages, huge speakers, decorative flags, huge banners, posters, promoters, drummers hanging around attracting every single passer-by. The mobile phone prices seemed very tempting, but its actually more costly here. However, 3 cheers to their promoting of goods, it was rather exaggerating as even roadside trees are even decorated with goldfoil. Lol!
01 May 2007 (Tues) *Labour Day*
Temp: 17 - 31c
Today is PRC's Golden holiday, known as the "wu-yi jie" (May 1st festival; Labour Day), a golden holiday that lasts 1 week to entice domestic shopping to boost local economy. Indeed it is very conspicuous as the whole stretch of road outside my hotel, aka the mobilephone street, have transformed to a street carnival with every shop having tentages, huge speakers, decorative flags, huge banners, posters, promoters, drummers hanging around attracting every single passer-by. The mobile phone prices seemed very tempting, but its actually more costly here. However, 3 cheers to their promoting of goods, it was rather exaggerating as even roadside trees are even decorated with goldfoil. Lol!
Look at the number of huge balloons & flags used to advertise Samsung phones
Promoters tempting you to purchase a phone
Lots of part-timers holding banners to attract potential customers
We checked out soon after, headed to the San Sheng Flower Village of Chengdu at Jinjiang District. It is a famous flower-themed village tourist attraction with many gardens with various types of plants. I think its more like many many "Far-east Floras" shops to me...Many gardens have tea houses and you can really see the locals relaxing there over a game of mahjong. How peaceful...
Wholesale Flower market
Map of San Sheng Flower Village...
Roadside vegetables & fruits sellers
Ahh...the district govt clearly states on the huge words that this is a national 4A's tourist site. Apparently all national-known tourist sites are graded according to their "stars"...
This is defintely a unique 3-wheeled car...
Travelled another 45mins to Luodai Ancient Town. It is the first Hakka town in the west Sichuan and 85% of the inhabitants are of Hakka origin. It is similar to Furong Ancient city on the 1st day, but on a grander scale and huge crowds. It really feels like entering back into the old ancient days.
Tortoises for sale
Note the 2nd line: Chengdu habitants love to eat rabbit brains! omg...
A rickshaw service is available to sightsee the entire stretch of town if your legs are too fatigue to walk...
Nothing is spared, even the phone booth have an authentic chinese roof over it...
Game for an ostrich meat???
A list of rules of a gracious visitor, such as no littering, no destroying of public property, etc
Lunch Galore!
Thats our last destination of Chengdu. Actually theres nothing much in the city to last you a few days, even the shopping experience wasnt great. The next stop was actually another tourist rip-off place called the Tibetan Medicine & Herbal shop. We were treated a free massage and an introduction of Tibetan medicine, including consultation by some doctors. They rattled for soooo long about the benefits and persuade you to buy. Somehow i pity the junior staffs who rely such commisions to earn their wages, but the prices are real exorbitant. If i really wanted to buy these stuff, I would have bought from Tibet and not here...We kept insisting we got a flight to catch and had no time to dilly-dally...the guide pulled a rather long face since then =p.
Arrived Chengdu Int'l Airport around 1730hrs, well in advance of the departure timings. The guide was apparently eager to return home early manz...Our dinner was none other than the newly-opened KFC restaurant at the corner of the airport. The meals were not only cheap, it has many interesting products such as Portugese Egg tarts, milkshakes, etc. There is even 2 plasma tvs to screen scheduled departure and arrival flights of the day for passengers' information.
This is probably the 1st airport that have huge booths selling fruits at their departure hall
The panda tower clock representing Chengdu city just outside the airport
Close-up view...
According to the guide, Chengdu city recently won the national best China city award, no wonder there are so many banners boasting their accolades.
As usual, domestic & int'l terminals go through separate checks. It is quite interesting to note hundreds of flights are domestic but only a handful are international. Just this evening alone, there are only 2 int'l flights, with mine the last. Our baggage was inspected thoroughly due to the implementation of restriction of >100ml liquid on handheld bags starting today. I didnt notice that when i first landed here. Haha. Well, at least the staff was well prepared, holding a pile of ziploc bags distributing to those who need them. In fact, the whole terminal seems to be serving our one only flight. Despite the checks, I spotted several people getting their stuff confiscated from the 2nd round of X-ray checks at the immigration. The above pic shows an empty terminal with the travellator leading to Gates A1-A10.
The whole terminal was indeed rather empty, all the other area lights are dimmed. The moment the announcements came over the PA system to state that our flight is ready for boarding, the shops started to roll down their shutters.
1940h - Boarded Air China Flight CA 403 through Gate A8.
Air China Flight CA 403
Airbus 319-215
Regstn Plate B-6036
1948h - CA 403 left CTU airport ontime due to low passenger loads. Headed towards taxiway.
1957h - CA 403 takes off, made a big U-turn and took quite a long time to scale upwards due to poor visibility.
Snacks: Beverages & Sichuan Peanuts
Dinner>>>
Vegetable Salad (carrot strips, mini cucumbers, crabstick in thousand island dressing)
Main Course (Curry Rice with grilled fish & potato)
Fruit Platter (2 X honeydew, 1 watermelon cubes)
Side Dishes (Bread, Sichuan Salted Veg, Butter)
During our meal, I could see an night aerial view of Yunnan city and regions of South China. The moonlight was particularly bright as well as it lited the entire dark sky.
Date: 02 May 2007 (Wednesday)
Temp: 26-31C
0034h - Flight CA 403 landed safely @ Singapore Changi Airport
0040h - Flight CA 403 berthed at Gate D30.
End>>>>
We know life's hard, truth is hard, lies are hard, they are all hard to accept when they have been
found out, and i'm rushing history homework on the Abyissian Crisis about Italy and Abyssia going into war and that the League Of Nations cannot stop this from happening, and beacuse they are formed by means to stop war and
peace-keep the countries together, they have thus failed to achieve that. I think i tend to hold a class for history instead of telling you about me, i'm basically a what subject-realted lover (humanities) and thus
I am more analytical and critical about things, and likes to study about dead people, haha. lol. it's history what can you expect and also geography, it amazes me. I really like it alot, so what have you? Again to find this answer
you need to enter into your own reality and reflect
it's amazing. amzing how people change the way of things, like how I used to hate outdoors in Band
felt it was a complete waste of time, i've acquired to like it more, i guess people change, their thereotical means and applications in life just goes on into a new direction, and see things in another perspective, i guess- it's
all in the mind. It really amazes me how these comes into action, from someone so pessimistic has changed his own view of things, and thus my friend is scoring much better, being more optimisitc and not think of his old way of suicidal
thoughts, which are pretty daunting. and thus we need to see things, in another light, another perspective and another new way, to enable us to open up our minds, and make more new things, the new way it is.