Trying to finish blogging about my China trip before I forget all about it!

I didn’t take too many photos on Day 3 because it was more of the same: Eating and shopping in Humen.

Tried on the funny hat I bought in Zhuhai.

After adjusting the hat this way and that, trying different hairstyles, I finally decided that it looked too silly, so I didn’t wear it out.

Which was just as well. When we stepped outside, we dicovered that the temperature had risen and it wasn’t as cold as it was the previous day.

We had breakfast at a Chinese cafe, which turned out disappointing.

We ordered you tiao, which was nice enough to begin with, but started tasting of ammonia after a while!! Seriously.

The Goonfather took it to the counter and asked them why, and they actually replied that it’s supposed to be like that, and you’re supposed to leave it out for a while for the ammonia taste to disappear.

But it’s the opposite of what they said. It tasted okay for five minutes and then it was inedible after that.

In any case, since when is you tiao supposed to taste like ammonia at any time at all?!

It was so foul it made us sick even to smell it.

(LOL. The Goonfather just wallked past my PC and saw the photo and said, “What is that?! Is it the disgusting ammonia you tiao??!)

The other things we tried were pretty mediocre.

Shopping after breakfast!

We came across a little corner in a car park with a few kiddy carnival rides. It was quite weird.

It’s always interesting to see sights overseas that you think weird but which locals find absolutely normal.

Like, all cab drivers in China are encased in little cages to deter mugging.

I don’t know about you but I find it a little dehumanising.

Here’s one of the malls we shopped at.

Humen is supposedly a fashion wholesale city, which was why we went there (since I’ve visited Shenzhen before).

Indeed, there is a lot of shopping and it’s very cheap if you know how to bargain. But a large percentage of wares is quite old-fashioned, so we didn’t buy much.

I LOVE THE BOOTS THOUGH.

I could have bought a hundred pairs of boots if not for luggage allowance and lack of time.

The problem is that most shoe stores are little spaces where they can’t keep stock, so if you want something in your size, they’d have to send a runner off to the warehouse to grab it. It takes about 20 minutes each time.

And you have to settle on a price (or even promise to buy it) before they’d send the runner. And if the shoe comes back and you try it on and decide you don’t want it after all, they’ll make you feel guilty for not buying it.

It’s a huge pain in the ass!

(Not all stores are like that, though. Some are pretty patient and pleasant.)

I didn’t buy many things in Humen because of all that. We had originally planned to stay in Humen for another day, but decided to bugger off to Shenzhen the next day.

Our day ended at a restaurant called Zhu Du Ji (literally “pig stomach chicken”), which is a steamboat restaurant featuring a pig stomach with chicken soup base, which I suppose sounds pretty gross if you’re not Chinese.

The soup is really quite tasty!

I might have mentioned this before but I will mention it again.

The Chinese are crazy! (In China, I mean.)

It was the tail end of winter and the weather had turned considerably warm (like a warmish aircon room in Singapore) and yet many people were still dressed in warm clothes and long sleeves.

EVEN IN A STEAMBOAT RESTAURANT INDOORS.

I was feeling warm and almost sweating even before we started eating, and yet there were people who had been eating for ages wearing thick, fur-lined jackets.

CRAZY.

Another quirk: All plates and cutlery come vacuum-sealed. (Except we probably don’t call chopsticks and spoons cutlery but I don’t know what to call them.)

This is supposed to be a show of hygiene.

They also give you a pot of hot tea and a big empty bowl, and you’re supposed to wash your bowl and cutlery with the tea, emptying the “dirty” tea water into the big bowl.

You don’t have to wash the plate because it’s for putting bones and unwanted food scraps.

It’s very troublesome!

Okay, end of Day 3! I took a photo of the hotel toothbrush cos it looks so posh I can’t stand it!

(Here’s the post I talked about the posh Humen hotel if you haven’t read it.)

I brought one toothbrush home! Hehe!

Our second day in China consisted of eating, shopping and travelling from Zhuhai to Humen by car.

One could fall in love with China if you knew the places to go to!

Our day started off at the hotel cafe for breakfast.

It wasn’t a good choice because the food was rather blah, but it was raining outside and VERY COLD and we (the girls) didn’t feel brave enough to venture out in search of food.

Back to the hotel room to pack after breakfast!

(Although it seems like we were doing everything but pack.)

We had a few hours to shop in Zhuhai before having to make the trip to Humen. There’s this huge shopping centre, just beside the border to Macau, which has pretty decent stuff. We left our luggages at the hotel and went shopping.

The mall is huge! Minou and I kept getting lost! We tried to shop systemically so we didn’t miss any spots but it was impossible. (The guys were off doing their own thing.)

There’s a bus stop inside the mall. Heheh.

Shortly after, Elyxia flew over from Hong Kong to join us for part of our holiday.

We had a snack of roast goose, char siew pau, soup and vegetables before leaving for Humen. Well, it was supposed to be a snack until someone went to order so much food.

The food was quite lousy, though. Strike two!

You can find private “taxis” for rent on the streets. They will take you to other cities/towns for a fee.

There was this guy who was so insistent on getting our business that he followed us for, like, 100 metres as we walked down the street, while the Goonfather bargained with him.

It was finally settled and we told him we’d call him when we needed him. I think we got it at S$72 (RMB350) for a 1.5-hour ride.

While waiting for our vehicle:

We kinda got conned. The guy told us he would get us a 7-seater. (There were five of us + the driver.) We ended up getting a small, beat-up, 5-seater sedan.

The Goonfather didn’t feel like bargaining for another hundred metres so we endured being squashed for more than an hour.

Along the way, we saw this abandoned structure where someone had spray-painted his grievances for the world to see.

“Grant me justice,” it says, “Give me back my company and properties.”

I don’t understand the line on the right. Anyone knows?

It was dark by the time we arrived at Humen.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE THE HOTEL IN HUMEN!!! <3 <3 <3

It’s so cheap, S$34 per person per night for twin-sharing, yet looks so grand and majestic!

It’s called Oriental Glory Hotel (东方锦河大酒店). Ironically, the lobby is decorated with Victorian-inspired chairs.

Inside the elevator:

The room is nice and spacious, and the bed very comfortable!

The only dodgy thing is the blinds covering the glass wall between the bathroom and the bedroom. It’s kinda broken and doesn’t cover very well, lol.

What I really love about China hotels is that they all provide free wi-fi. The only downside is that their sockets are different from ours so we need to use an adapter. But the hotels provide them so it’s not so bad.

This hotel even has PCs in every room.

Of course, the other big downside, as we all know, is that you can’t access Facebook, Twitter and Plurk in China. T_T

The Goonfather then took us to the shopping district in Humen for a quick tour before dinner. It’s full of shopping centres, many of them specialised centres. At night, the shopping comes out into the streets, too!

Dinner was perfect. No strike three!

Almost everything was good!!!

They have flavoured Tsingtao beer, about eight different flavours. I tried the grape beer, which is quite nice! It tastes sort of like if you mix F&N Grape with beer. Haha.

A cold cucumber dish. It was so good we ordered another plate near the end of dinner!

Another crowd favourite, a fatty beef dish cooked with salt and pepper:

Baby lobsters marinated with peppercorn oil:

This was really hard to eat cos there’s so little meat. But tasty!

The only thing I didn’t like that meal: Man tou with condensed milk. The bun is tough and the condensed milk tastes like White Rabbit Candy.

Oops, I forgot what this dish is. Some chicken thing. Very good. And very spicy:

(Most of the dishes were spicy.)

Corn with pine nuts:

Mala fish:

I was only okay with it until I discovered the huge bunches of giant tau gehs inside. I didn’t take a photo of the bunches cos I was busy eating them up, but here are a few strings… all that was left by the time I was done and remembered to take a photo. =P

Hmm… I forgot to take a photo of the mutton satay (Chinese-style). I hope we’ll have a chance to go back to Humen again because I love the food!

We went to a foot spa after dinner. There were seven of us by then (two more friends joined us from China) and we got an eight-pax room.

This is the spa where the receptionists wear red Cinderella-style ball gowns. They didn’t allow me to take photos, though. Sad.

The Goonfather said it’s because the girls are ashamed of working in massage parlours and don’t want to be seen.

I LOVE THE FOOT SPAS IN CHINA.

While soaking your feet, they massage your body. Then they massage your feet. Then they massage the rest of your body. (It’s all dry massage with clothes on, except the feet.) Very, very nice! And you can just add hours on the spot so they’ll massage you for as long as you like.

It costs about $8 an hour.

The girls are really sweet and friendly, chatting and joking and giggling with each other and with us all night. It turned out to be a really fun social activity.

I was originally planning to blog while having my feet massaged. The Goonfather didn’t tell me they also massage the rest of your body, so I ended up not being able to blog at all, duh.

I even took a cab from our dinner place back to our hotel to get my netbook while the guys were finishing their beers, then cabbed to the spa to meet them.

DUH WASTE MY TIME.

By the time we returned to our hotel, it was, like, 2 or 3 am, and I only had a few hours of sleep left, so NO BLOGGING.

That’s the trouble with holidays. Never enough time!

I didn’t buy as much as I wanted to in China because we actually spent a lot of time travelling. In six days, we went from Macau to Zhuhai to Humen to Shenzhen to Tangxia to Zhangmutou back to Zhuhai then to Macau again.

Plus retailers were still selling winter stuff.

So, here’s what I got (besides shoes and clothes cos I haven’t photographed them yet):

I know these aren’t very practical in Singapore but I needed them to save my life in China since it was winter.

Plus they are super cute, which is the true reason I got them.

I didn’t actually need them after the first day because it started getting warmer and warmer and warmer.

Okay so I went a little crazy with the watches. But they are SOOOOO CHEAP.

After bargaining hard, each watch costs S$3 to S$4.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT.

There was one I really really liked but it cost like S$7 after bargaining which is still super dirt cheap but on principle I would have been conned if I had bought it, so I didn’t.

(Cos it was like RMB15 vs. RMB35 which, in RMB, is a huge difference.)

Being in China for a while makes you cynical and penny-pinching because everyone is out to con you. Most of the time, they will quote you anywhere from 2 to 5 times the reasonable selling price, so you really need to spend time bargaining.

Then, after a while, you suddenly realise that you’re beginning to spend 10 minutes just to bargain off 50 Singapore cents, and then you start to feel a bit silly.

Did I go overboard with the headbands, too?

I’ve always liked headbands and even bought a few in the distant past but never wore them out because they just didn’t look nice on my straight, limp, slippery hair.

Now that I have curly, damaged hair, the headbands actually look nice, so I am overcompensating for all those missed years!!!

Okay plus headbands are so sweet nowadays (love the ribbon types; I have so many now!) and they are cheap in China, all under S$10.

Don’t puzzle too hard. It’s a hairclip.

I wonder if anyone recognises any of the above jewellery.

S$20 each.

The exact same bag in two different colours (using a different strap for each).

I know they both look almost the same colour but it’s just the photo. One is black and the other brown!

I like buying similar things in different colours when I can’t decide which to get. Cos I always regret not buying the other colour of something when I need it to match an outfit!

Bags = S$10 each.

The one on top with the bear tag is, like, S$7.

Wanted to buy more bags but couldn’t find many nice ones.

LOL. One of every colour I like. Can’t remember how much but cheap enough for me to just grab without having to consider too much.

A little pouch I bought for Wang Wang. They actually had about five colours and I kinda wanted to buy a couple for myself, too, but I ended not. I can’t imagine why. I think there were times when I tried very hard to be sensible and thrifty. Duh.

Cute danglies!

Okay, that’s the lot!

I might share photos of my clothes and shoes in the form of fashion shoots (with me in the picture lah) but I’ll have to try and figure a way to manage that.

Very hard for me to self-camwhore my outfits nowadays cos there’s no suitable place at home to do it. (That’s why my Fashion Diary entries suddenly stopped.)

Okay Happy Chinese New Year! Need to rush out for last minute CNY preps now!

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!

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.