Happy Hour

Yesterday I attended a "Happy Hour at the Marine House" event.
There are about a dozen young Marines that live at the US Embassy, and they have this event once a month. There is food for $8 and drinks for $5 (an amazing price, by the way!). The event is invitation only, though not necessarily for the sake of exclusivity, but more because of the fact that you ave to be on the list to get into the Embassy. My mom, on her tour of the Embassy last week, had been informed that, though many were invited, it was often a younger crowd that showed up, so naturally, she sent her 21 and 18 year old instead.
Unfortunately, this tip was wrong. The majority of people there were probably about the same age as my parents and most, though not all, seemed to work at the Embassy.
*sigh* oh well. We ate our subs and drank our drinks, and were about to leave, when a girl started talking to us. Her name was Heather, and we instantly became friends. Later, I was introduced to someone else named Kevin. They are both on some sort of work study type of scholarship thing for 9 months.
We headed out of the Embassy and down towards Orchard where we walked around and grabbed some more food.

We tried two desserts... Ice Kachang and Cheng Tng. They were both pretty good, actually. Singaporeans (or really, just Asians in general from what I can tell) put all of this weird stuff into their desserts, like beans and such, so sometimes they look a little unappetizing.
Ice Kachang, pictured left, had beans and small red jello cubes in the bottom of the bowl, then a pile of shaved ice, and then a mango sauce with mango chunks in it.  The ice was colored red, brown and green. The whole thing was a lot sweeter than I thought it would be, and actually tasted good with the mango, which I have not always been a fan of in the past.

The Cheng Tng, pictured below, had all sort of...stuff, for lack of any actual knowledge of what it all was. One top of the stuff, they put shaved ice, and then the filled the bowl up with some brown sugary liquid. The ice melted pretty quickly, so it is mostly gone in this pic. We ordered it because the guy in front of us got it and said it was his favorite. It actually had sort of a caramelized taste to it.

After, we hopped on a bus down to Clarke Quay to see the night scene going on down there. We mostly just hung around, but I hope to go back and do some actually clubbing or something.
A fun night  all around, I think. :)

Celebrate the Little Things

Guess what readers... it is time to celebrate! Why? Two reasons:
1.) I have reached the 1000+ blog views mark! Holla!!!! Super excited about this one guys, and it is all thanks to youuuuuu (and you, and you, and you....). I am so excited, that I have decided to bake each and everyone of you a cake. Unfortunately for you, I will also be eating each and every one of your cakes due to complicated mailing issues...and because I like cake.
2.) My last post was number 33 of 2011! I had 33 posts the entire year for 2010...so yay for doubling and surpassing my previous numbers!

Yes these accomplishments might be small... but hey, I don't have any other holidays or what-nots to celebrate, so why not party over  these?

On a side note, I am happy to inform you that the Grand Prix came to Singapore last weekend. Formula 1, as the race is known here. Singapore is well known for having a long, twisty night  track, so naturally the whole place has been teeming with excitement for months in anticipation. Roads were closed down in the downtown area all weekend for the cars.
The Grand Prix is like the world's version of Nascar, but the cars are smaller and more speedy looking. Though I have never followed Nascar, I am pretty sure I enjoyed Formula 1 better.
Shakira and Lincoln Park were also here last weekend performing on stages in the downtown area around the races... so sad I didn't get to see them :(

Beijing

Alright, time to dish the info on my time in Beijing!

So I set up a private tour with my family through a company called Bespoke Beijing. We had our own tour guide, Laura, and driver, Liu (who spoke NO English) all to ourselves for 3 days, then another day of planned itinerary, and one more day free. For sake of organization, I will take this one cool sight at a time.

Temple of Heaven

Old men painting Calligraphy 

Now Laura insisted that the only time to see the Temple of Heaven was in the morning, and now I know why. The entrance is park area, and the exit is also a long park area. It was filled with the locals! They were dancing, playing games, writing calligraphy, singing in large groups, knitting etc… It was pretty cool seeing them hang out and socialize like that. It was mostly, though not completely older, retired people… and hey, I wouldn’t mind a retired life looking like that! 

Chinese Chess

The Temple itself was a place where the Emperor would come and pray for things like good harvest. The entire area is built with a square wall, and an entirely circular inside… that is to symbolize the earth, being the square, and the heavens, represented by the circle. Once you enter the circle, you are dealing with heavenly stuff (hence the prayer and sacrifice that took place there). *side note* The ancient Chinese money, the circular coin with a square piece cut out, represents the opposite of the Temple of Heaven; the square representing the earth and the people, surrounded by the heavens. 

Anyway, the exit to the Temple of Heaven is this really long corridor type of thing… apparently the longest covered one or some weird record like that. The entire thing was intricately painted with detailed murals of old stories… some of which Laura stopped to tell us about. 

Tiananmen Square

Well, I have been to Tiananmen Square. To be honest, it was interesting being there, but otherwise I have nothing much to say about the place. We just walked around a bit and in general headed towards the Forbidden City… which took a little longer than planned because we had to stop and take pictures with Asian families who wanted their photos with us. One lady even pushed her baby into my mom’s arms and made us all stand around them for a picture. That kind of thing happened pretty regularly.

Forbidden City 

Every building the Emperor stays in has these.

The Forbidden City was…amazing. The roofs are almost all gold colored… the color of the emperor. The place was pretty big! The emperor stayed in the Forbidden City during the winter, and in the Summer palace during the… yep, you guessed it!... the Summer. Again, the amount of detail on each and every building in the place. What you might not realize… none of these structures are built with even one nail! Anyway, the entire area is decorated with dragons, the symbol of the emperor, and phoenixes, the symbol of the empress. 

Also, the first huge courtyard area has absolutely no trees what so ever to guard against possible assassins. For the same reason, the Emperor had 15 layers of bricks beneath the ground layer that we walked on… except that is not just for the entrance courtyard, but the entire grounds! Off course in the back of the Forbidden City, they had an entire garden for the Emperor and his children to enjoy… so I guess they weren’t worried about assassins there? 

Olympic Buildings

Of course we also went to see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. So exciting! The Bird’s Nest was HUGE!!! I mean, I knew it was huge, but at the same time, it was so much larger than I had thought it would be!!

The Great Wall

This is how slanted one section was. haha

Alright, alright… The Great Wall. Awesome. We rode about 2 hours outside of Beijing to get to a more remote section of the wall… get away from those obnoxious tourists! Lol Anyway, this section of the wall has not been redone in most parts, so we were walking for about 3 hours along the original thing! Let me just say that some parts were STEEP! It was really cool getting to see the wall… it stretches all along the tops of these mountains, and as you drive up you’re thinking: “Oh my gosh… there is no way this is possible!” Discussing the length of the original wall is a bit complicated… but if you were to stretch it out straight, it would be greater than the width of the US from Miami to California! 

Summer Palace

Huge lake! All the gold-roofed buildings are part of the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace (name is self-explanatory) is built beside this huge lake… which actually makes it quite cooler in the whole area. What can I say? More beautiful buildings with amazingly detailed designs and painting, more fun pictures with the traveling Chinese tourists.

Lama Temple

Yay more temples! 

(okay, okay… I might have said that a little sarcastically) haha… it is just that I have been to sooooo many temples! Here, they had the tallest standing Buddha…no pictures allowed, of course! Also… I DID get to see some Lamas :) 

798 District

Made out of folding chairs!

lol Cookie-cutter Asian!

Now this is a cool little part of town that many don’t know much about. It is a place that used to have a bunch of factories, now they aren’t operational, so a bunch of younger modern artists moved in. It is full of modern art galleries and interesting statues and sculptures around the streets.

One of the galleries we went in had a room with 4 blank walls where a huge David Bowie was broadcast on the walls with his blasting music… a version of one of his songs that the artist interpreted as Modern Art. (I admit I am not a pro on the subject, I mostly just wanted to go for the street art!)

Hutongs

Do you guys know what Hutongs are?... I didn’t. They are alleys, basically. Off of the alleys, there are Courtyards with surrounding rooms. Each of the rooms is occupied by a different family, sometimes shared by families. There are also small kitchens, which they often share, and no bathrooms! Outside in the alley… the Hutong, there are public restrooms which everyone uses. Obviously I didn’t get the chance to see the men’s restroom… but I did glance into one of the women’s… and I now understand why many older women seem to have an aversion to doors in bathrooms… there are none in the Hutong bathrooms! So anyway… thousands and thousands of people live in these in China. Some have been remodeled a bit, some have not.

It is really unbelievable when you think of a nation which has been moving forward so quickly, can still be stuck in such a backwards practice! I mean some of the Hutongs seem clean enough, despite the lack of personal room or anything else that we might consider “normal” but some are serious dumps.

We took a rickshaw ride through one Hutong area, and went shopping in some of the other ones which have becoming local shopping streets.

Night market

One of the famous sights in Beijing is the Night Market. It is not huge or anything, but it is a long row of hawker-type stands selling all sorts of goodies… of course, what “goodies” are is up to the individual, I souse. I would define “goodies” as the yummy fruit and toffee-covered snacks… my brother, however, chose to define “goodies” as scorpions, sea horses and star fish. Among the list of also available “treats”, though not tried by any of us, were water beetles, snake, the private parts of male sheep, centipedes and silk worms! At some of the stands, the bugs were still alive!... well, up until the time that they were cooked. 

Whew! Well those were the highlights of Beijing! I hope you learned a bit more about the places, I guess… and enjoyed the pictures of course!

Xi'an

I back!!!! Whew! Spent the last 8 days or so (add two for travel) in China. The first 3 were spent in Xian. 

A bit of background? Well Xian was one of the ancient capitals of China. Seriously, it is REALLY old. As in early-human-remains-discovered-here old! Also, Xian is not a huge city… I they consider themselves to be pretty small, though I think they might be considered a 3^rd-tier city (or whatever they call them). So how big would you think that meant in the US? Well in China, it means 3.5 million people. Yeah. 

So those of you who know anything about Xian at all are probably wondering:  Did you see the Terracotta Army? Yes!

So Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, commissioned the building of is Terracotta army. The soldiers, larger than life-sized, are in 4 (known) pits around the Emperor’s Tomb which, by the way, has never been opened. In pit one, the largest, 2,000 of the 6,000 soldiers have been unearthed… they are still working on the rest. Pit 2 and 3 are also available for viewing, and neither of them is finished yet, either! Each soldier was made out of Terracotta clay and has amazing details…even the treads in their shoes and wrinkles in their clothing where added in. Each soldier’s face is different… in fact, many soldiers sat to have their face copied out, and all the soldiers were painted, though the paint has since disintegrated on most of the them.  

…but I am getting ahead of myself a bit. So my trip…. My family had scheduled a two day private tour in Xian and had an amazing guide- Lily and a driver. Unfortunately, it was raining for most of our trip to Xian. Anyway, our first sop the next day was the Terracotta Army. As you might have gathered from the above info, it was pretty interesting. Lily told us all the details. Unfortunately, there is simply no way I could possibly be able to type them all down here! Next stop…. Museum! Now since China has soooo much history, their museums are correspondingly huge and packed with historic tidbits. This time, however, Lily was there to guide us along. We spent about 2 hours there, and still skipped a lot of it! 

I enlarged this Terracotta Warrior, for two reasons. 1: Not all of his paint has worn off... see the color in there? and 2: so you can better see the amazing detail that each soldier has. Take a look at his hair and clothing as an example...and if you look close enough (I realize it is hard to see in the pic) you can see the individual treads on his shoes!

Next? Big Goose Pagoda. This is a big tower that houses monks…and apparently there is no real consensus as to the reason for its name. lol We went up to the top… a gruesome 7 flights (where 7= more like 14), but it was a pretty good view of the city. After, we saw a cultural show…a REAL one, mind you! Not like that one I saw in Indonesia! Haha It was okay. We had a dinner that was about 7 courses while they played traditional music on instruments that nobody (except the performers) play anymore, and also did some traditional dances and stuff. 

Day two!

The city wall! So China has this love of walls. They have this one… called the Great Wall… you might have heard of it, they like to brag about it a lot. lol Well Xian, what was the old city (now it is larger) has a city wall built around it. It was huge! There are 4 gates and in the center of the town, as with all the old cities, there is a huge bell tower, struck in the morning, and a huge drum tower, struck at night. We rode bikes around part of the wall… the entire thing is about 10k long or something… but the “best” part was when somebody stole my parent’s tandem bike! They got off to take a picture, turned back and it was gone! We didn’t get in trouble or anything, though, because only rented bikes are allowed on the wall, so it is not like somebody could sneak it away. 

The dumplings we learned how to make

We also did an in-home visit while there. We went into this lady’s house and sat with her and chatted, then she made dinner and showed us how to cook some of the food. She was an excellent cook! 

Lastly, we went to an old Mosque… but this was no Mosque like any I had ever seen before. In fact, the only thing that gave it away was the prayer room. Otherwise, it looked just like a Chinese garden!Look... this pic to the right is the entrance... no domes or anything like that here!

So that was Xian! 

Let’s see… a few interesting facts I learned about China?

1.)    The children seem to spend more time at school than the parents do at work! Ridiculous, in my opinion!

2.)    Chinese ladies like to leave the door open when they’re in the bathroom for some reason.

3.)    Lots of Chinese couples get married in restaurants… it is apparently the “in” thing! They also consult someone about the best days to get married which is based on their own birth dates as well as their relatives’ too.

4.)    Having both a girl and a boy is considered lucky. People liked our family :)

5.)    People who work for the government can be fired for having more than one child!

So that was Xian in a nutshell, though I assure you I could go on for quite a while about it if I had the time (or space). Enjoy all the pictures!

Night Safari

Tonight I went to Singapore's night time zoo... they call it the Night Safari!
So cool!... so you know how you spend all day long in the sun trying to get the animals to even blink at you from their shady slumber? Well, that is because many of the animals there are nocturnal! So a while, Singapore decided that since the animals were active during the night, it would make more sense to show them off then!
Bam! Night Safari. It opens in the evening until midnight and is located within the normal Zoo grounds, but at the same time, it was also different. The Zoo tram drove on a slightly different path that took you much closer to many of the animals, and had a sort of "tour guide" navigating along the way. As you might have guessed, it was really dark, and no flash photography was allowed. There were also the walking paths, but they were much more restricted in some areas, and then there were other paths that must be closed off during the day, because they definitely weren't there before!
Highlights?
The wolves gathering to howl together, the huge Tiger playing with something right in front of the viewing window, the two Leopard cubs pulling playfully on ropes while their mom watched, Rhinos and Hippos actually MOVING around, an enclosed bat area that we could walk through as the bats flapped around and past us, huge flying squirrels actually soaring around.... get the picture? Needless to say, I enjoyed the whole thing very much. Unfortunately, I also am not in bed as early as I usually have been, so I am planning to sleep in and forgo the exercise in the morning.
Oh well. Anyway, so I've a full day ahead tomorrow.... getting ready to leave for Xian and Beijing Saturday morning, so I'll be packing and finishing as much of next week's homework as I can! When I was in Shanghai I couldn't access my blog, and I doubt I will be able to this time either, so it is goodbye for a week or so until I return!

Lion Dance

All this week the Lion Dance Championship is being held down on Orchard Road.
You know the sort of Lion I'm talking about...

 the one where two guys are covered up by the decorated version of Lion fur, and they dance around and act like a Lion.
Haha... that is probably a really offensive description for serious Lion-dancing people, sorry if I offend anyone! Anyway, during the championship, the two guys jump around on raised posts to the beat of drums and other instruments. I am not exactly sure of what their judging criteria is, but I think part of it is how much they can act/look like an actual animal, because they spend a lot of time doing stuff that a lion would do, then suddenly they are jumping up and down and doing lifts and stuff! Each team had their own set to perform on, and they would change after each team.

Here is one of the teams. Not sure that the video is excellent, but they were actually the best team. The entire routine lasted about 15 minutes total... talk about a workout for those Lion boys!

*Side Note* Ate at TGI Fridays tonight! Sooooo good! :)

Fish Food

Monday Night
This morning we got up and head into KL around 10:30. What was the destination? SHOPPING! The have a mall laid out with a bunch of little shops and stands run by the locals. It was great! I bought a wrap-around style skirt that is popular around here, my parents got a few souvenirs and gifts... but the best part of the day by far was the Fish Spa.
What is a fish spa, you ask? Well they are petty simple really... large fish tanks or pools with benches around them filled with small fish. The interesting part is what the fish eat... namely, YOU. Thats right. You put your feet in the water and the fish swarm around you and eat the dead skin off of your feet and ankles and...well, pretty much as high up your leg as they can get. They also have tanks for your hands, but I didn't do one of those.

So after convincing my mom that she also wanted to participate, we payed up for our ten minutes... (US wise, it was about $2) and stuck our feet in. The worst part was how much it tickled! The best part was the four late twenties-aged American guys who couldn't resist joining us, but then couldn't stand the tickley feeling long enough to keep their feet in for a full minute straight. Our little spa area was so loud with the male squealing that we drew a crowd!...which I am sure the spa lady loved.

Anyway, the fish spa was so funny, I am going to have to do it again! They are all over the place in Singapore.
hmmm... what else did we do of interest... well, we did eat at KFC. Since we've eaten at both the Singapore and China KFC we thought we had better try the Malaysian one... liked it! Actually, it was far better than Singapore's. Come to think of it, I haven't mentioned what we ate last night... Pizza HUt! Also delicious, though I still miss the good old USA version :(
Hmm... besides that, the other main activity was getting back home, I guess. Our plane was delayed at the airport, but only for about 30 minutes, so that wasn't too bad. We spent the remaining Malaysian money we had on duty-free chocolate... don't tell my dad! lol
Overall impression? I enjoyed KL and would probably go again... though I would mostly just do more shopping, so on second thought, maybe I had better not try visiting anymore! Next big trip starts this weekend: China! We are going to Xian and Beijing. I won't be able to upload new posts while I'm there, but I will keep track of all the cool stuff and update you later, promise!