Okay, so, imma totally flood my blog with photos of my China trip for some time to come.

Food! Shopping! Camwhoring! Dodgy English translations!

Aren’t you so very excited!

When we met at Changi Airport on that first morning, Minou and I found that we had worn rather matching outfits. Yay!

A China hairstylist thought we were sisters, hah.

Settling down in the plane:

We took Jetstar. I really hate how budget airlines do not serve food. I mean, they do, but you have to pay for them, like $15 for a box of chicken rice.

That’s still fine because it’s still cheaper than paying for a full-price flight. The problem is that they run out of food even before they’re done serving everyone.

I was really hungry and was willing to pay to the skies for a hot meal but all they could offer me was peanuts. We got peanuts, potato chips and soft drinks at 5-star hotel bar prices.

After 3 hrs 15 mins, we landed at Macau International Airport.

The plan was to walk across the border to Zhuhai because it’s cheaper to fly to Macau than to China. So I got to visit Macau for the first time! Yay!

It was almost 7 pm and rather foggy so it looked more like dawn than dusk. It was also surprisingly warm, wasting our effort in bundling up. (We were there on Jan 28, supposedly the tail end of winter.)

We were waiting for Unker Kell to find food in the airport when I caught the Goonfather in this funny photo. Haha.

From the airport, we took a cab to the border of Macau and Zhuhai, where we had to pass through immigrations again.

Um, that was all the time we had in Macau. LOL.

It wasn’t a terribly long walk. Certainly a lot shorter than the Singapore-Malaysia causeway. Before too long, we had reached Zhuhai!

The moment you get out of immigrations, you can see hotels and malls, a welcoming sight! It was very foggy and the air was nice and cool, like a mild aircon.

We walked to the nearest hotel (Jin Ye) and checked in. It cost us S$23 per person for twin-sharing rooms. Super cheap!

I’ve already shared some photos of the hotel and Zhuhai sights, so click here if you haven’t seen them.

I know I said Zhuhai’s a scary place, but I kinda liked it because you can find nice food and good shopping there. I won’t mind going back again!

But I won’t stay in this scary hotel anymore. It was okay, really, just very old-fashioned and smells a bit musty, which makes me think of old Chinese ghost movies, therefore very bad when I’m showering alone in the dim bathroom.

We found a much nicer hotel nearby on our way home, about double the cost but still cheap. Will talk about that in a future post.

On this trip, we discovered that the people in China are really scared of cold. Everyone is bundled up in jackets and coats, while four of us tourists were ambling about in short-sleeve tees.

Which is rather surprising because I’m usually the first person to complain about cold, anywhere.

There were times in China when I was literally sweating in my t-shirts but all the Chinese were still all bundled up in wool and fur!! Crazy Chinese!

Okay, there’s something in Zhuhai I must recommend you. It’s called Peeing Beef Balls (撒尿牛肉丸), popularised by Stephen Chow in one of his silly slapstick movies.

The idea is that the beef balls are so juicy that when you bite into them, the juice will spray out like pee.

Not a very appetising thought, but the balls are delicious!!

They’re sold by a friendly hawker at a street stall.

They didn’t spray when we ate them but it could be because they were hot and we were nibbling on them very carefully.

The Goonfather said the first time, Unker Kell bit into the ball and it sprayed onto his crotch! Hahaha.

Inside each ball is some gooey stuff which is very tasty!!!

The only fault lies in the soup, which is not soup but oil. That’s really icky but the guys were slurping it up. Gross!!

You can order noodles with the balls, so imagine eat noodles in oil, yuck.

Nomming balls.

You can find the beef ball stall on 莲花路 (Lian Hua Lu – “Lotus Flower Road”)

On the same street, you can find a whole row of mini outdoor pubs which men will love because each pub features cute chinese girls who will call out flattering words to men, sometimes even jumping out to drag them to their pubs.

The Goonfather complained about the girls not calling out to him this time round cos Minou and I were there. -__-

The city also has very grand-looking spas with girls in costumes waiting to welcome you.

In fact, this isn’t just in Zhuhai. It seems like the whole of China has such services.

We walked to a place called something 酒吧街 (Jiu Ba Jie – “Bar Street”) which is a long street lined up with clubs and bars. We went there in search of dinner because the bars are also restaurants, although they’re rather pricey.

The coolest thing about these bars is that the staff are all dressed in very elaborate costumes, like Victorian gowns and such.

Costumes seem to be a huge feature in China. In the spa we visited the next day, the receptionists are dressed in, like, Cinderella ball gowns.

We chose a place called Seven for our dinner, which consisted of a variety of finger foods (because the finger foods are GOOD.)

These cucumber sticks come with a very potent wasabi and soy sauce mix. Even the tiniest drop will send wasabi steam shooting up your nose and eyes. But it tastes so good!

And I don’t even like cucumber in the first place!

Duck jaw – very crispy and tasty!

Yummy satay! I can’t remember what meat. All the good food has muddled my brain!

Roasted duck breast.

Corn on the cob. Crunchy and sweet.

Chicken wing tip. Tasty marinade, but tip is not crispy.

I accidentally took a camwhore shot while my camera was zoomed in!

Always gives me a scare when that happens, to see my face so big.

Proper one:

Funny translation on the menu:

Presenteed A Wine If Dressed In Pajamas!!!

LOL.

We had gone a day too early, or we would have seen pajama-clad cuties. On our itinerary was to travel to Humen the next day, but the Goonfather had half a mind to stay behind for this pajama party. Haha.

It got colder after dinner, so I had to put my fur hoodie back on. Walking back to our hotel, we stopped by a pedler selling sweet potatoes and got some steaming hot ones!

Erm… but it wasn’t nice at all. Too mushy. =(

Then it was back to the hotel!

Last camwhoring at the hotel while waiting for Minou to finish using the bathroom and for the Goonfather to finish borrowing my netbook. I had nothing else better to do!

Now, stay tuned for Day 2!

Lunch menu today:

Carbs – Almond cookies
Meat – Chinese beef jerky
Veges – Super Crisp seaweed
Fruits – Ribena pastilles

It’s balanced wat, no?

Lesson of the day: Cheap doesn’t mean good!!

I got 3D gel nails in China for, like, S$34 and am now severely regretting it.

We didn’t even know we were getting gel nails. I don’t usually do manicures and I’ve never done nail art or nail extensions, so I know next to nothing about nails.

Minou had done acrylic nails before but only a couple of times, I think.

We walked into this salon in Zhangmutou, a small town in Dongguan, China. I hear that the town is nicknamed Little Hong Kong. It’s where Hong Kong men keep their mistresses cos it’s near enough to Hong Kong and the rent is a lot cheaper there. Haha.

Anyway, we walked into this salon and said we wanted to do nail art.

They showed us books of pretty nail designs, we pointed at what we liked, and we fixed a price.

Then, instead of doing our nails in this bright and airy place, they brought us to a dingy secluded shop in a corner of the mall which featured a row of ratty, old seats.

That was still fine. Things tend to be old and ratty in China (at least in the parts I visited). It’s kinda usual and expected.

First, we got a regular manicure treatment. Trimming, filing, soaking, cuticle cutting.

And then the scary thing happened.

Wait, let me introduce you to Sacha (pronounced Sasha) first.

Because I’ll be using her hands to illustrate the next few steps (for the benefit of readers who don’t know how nail extensions work). And you’ll be seeing more of her in my coming posts on my China trip.

Sacha is our new friend whom we don’t see much of because she’s the girlfriend of an old friend whom we don’t see much of because he’s always travelling.

Back to nails!

After trimming our nails short and filing away a thin layer of our surface nails, they paste thick stickers around our nails to act as moulds.

They then apply a thick layer of gel all over our nails, extending out onto the sticker to create desired lengths.

(After going home and doing some research, I discovered that gel is supposed to be applied very thinly and not thickly!)

The little gel pots:

When one finger has been gelled, we have to stuff that hand into a little oven that has little tubes of UV lights, for “baking”.

The nail technician will then work on the other hand. In this way, both hands are being worked on alternately, one in the oven, one being gelled.

This looks very scary but looks are the least of my worries. The baking HURTS like a bitch.

After a few seconds in the “oven”, the gel will melt and seep into the nail bed, causing a pain like the dripping of a large drop of hot wax onto your skin, but more severe because the pain lasts longer, about 10-20 seconds, until the gel hardens.

Since each finger is gelled and baked individually, we had to endure the pain 10 times.

Strangely, only Sacha and I had to go through that ordeal. Minou only felt pain on one finger. The rest were nothing to her.

After the first round is done and the nails harden, another round of gel is applied. This is quite tedious and I hate the endless applying and baking. I would have gone crazy with boredom if I hadn’t been with friends.

Since both hands are always occupied, you can’t read or play games the whole time!

After two rounds, the gel nails look like this:

These are my fingers now.

The nails were originally longer. A LOT longer. I made my nail technician file them down because I think too-long nails are scary.

He was quite reluctant and kept filing little by little, until he stopped at this length and refused to shorten them anymore!

Once the length is right, the sides and surface are filed to even them out.

And then the nail art.

This was what I chose:

I was deliberating between this and something bling-sparkly, but finally chose this cos it’s cute and the red would be nice for the coming Chinese New Year.

So, the disaster started when my nail technician made the red tips with red gel.

I don’t even have to explain. THIS IS JUST TOTALLY WRONG IS IT NOT?

He did one red heart and it looked so horrible, with the tips being wrong and the white hearts being wrong and all, I stopped him from making the rest of the red hearts.

The hearts are made on the spot using these jars of powder.

A thin stick is dipped in water, then dipped into the powder to form a tiny ball of paste. This ball is transferred to the nail and then pressed and shaped by the stick into a desired shape.

Another layer of gel is coated over the hearts. Another round of baking (zzzz).

I ended up with clear nails with translucent red tips, which was totally wrong.

I said, the base nail should be pearl white, like in the picture, and the tip should be layered and opaque and not so fat.

He said he couldn’t do anything more about the tips and they’re meant to be like that, and as for the base, he layered on even more clear gel while adding sparkly dust to the gel to create a pearl effect.

More baking.

I said I wanted crystals. Partly for bling effect and partly to distract from the unsightly red tips, which he refused to get rid of.

For a start, I told him to add two crystals on the side of each heart. I wanted smaller crystals but this was the smallest he had.

I should have stopped here, but the red tips really bothered me. They looked so ching chong obiang I wanted to rip them off there and then but I had had enough pain for a day.

I dictated the design for my fourth finger, the one with crystals surrounding half the heart. And then he took it into his mind to design a stupid flower for my middle finger.

I said, “Um.. okay, but I prefer my design.”

So he did the same for my index finger. And then he tried to give me a different stupid design for each other finger.

I was quite weary and despairing by this time and only thought about how I just wanted him to get it over and done with so that I could go home to Singapore to have it all removed.

I let him design the rest of the nails but making him tweak the crystals here and there to make it less ugly.

Right hand:

See how his hearts aren’t even facing the same way for both hands! And both ways are wrong, anyway, if you compare with the original design I wanted.

The last to go was my right thumb. I designed this and was quite pleased with it because it covered the red tip quite a bit.

A final layer of gel over everything and more baking.

By the time it was all done, my nails were as thick as phone books.

So damn ridiculous lah!!

Compare what I wanted with what I got.

Uber major epic fail!!!!!!!!!

Now I need to find an experienced gel nail specialist to remove these because I read that improper removal will cause damage to the nail bed.

And gel nails have to be filed down instead of soaked off like acrylic nails, so I’m scared!

My fingers also hurt occasionally now. It’s very mild though, but annoying. Feels like the kind of pain you get when you have a tooth/gum ache, like tingly and itchy and sore at the same time.

All this, and I didn’t even want nail extensions in the first place cos my nails were already long enough for me.

Sigh.

After a China shopping trip where I bought two luggages full of stuff, I am STILL clicking on stupid Facebook ads advertising online fashion shops!!

OH NO THIS IS BAD. I ISH WEAK.

While we were in China, the Goonfather spent a lot of time in spas chatting with young Chinese girls who work there.

He found out they’re all addicted to a farming game in QQ, China’s largest social networking site (like Facebook).

I also just found out that many articles have been written on this addcition that has swept the whole of China. People would wake up in the middle of the night to harvest crops.

(There’s also this rumour reported in the papers that a baby died because the doctor was too busy playing Happy Farm and didn’t attend to the baby in time.)

So, the Goonfather was laughing about the China girls. He was saying, “They’re crazy! They run away from their rural homes to escape a life of farming, and then they come to the city and play farming games!”

I thought that was kinda funny, too, and I laughed.

But, at the same time, I could empathise.

I told the Goonfather, “I hate cooking in real life but I spend all my time cooking in Cafe World!”

He stared at me for a few seconds, gave a big sigh, and didn’t say anything more.

Then, the next thing you know, we’re back in Singapore and getting ready to sleep and he springs up and says, “Oh, wait! I need to go harvest my crops!”

T_T