The best food can often be found at the dirtiest alleys.

Still in Changping, there’s an an alley full of little eating outlets about 8 minutes’ walk from our hotel (Hui Hua Hotel).

We went to this outlet called Ah Sheng BBQ (阿胜烧烤 something – their shop names are always so long that I don’t have time to read everything before stepping into the shop).

The Goonfather had eaten there before and couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards. This place was the reason we extended our stay in Changping for two nights. I had a sore throat our first two nights there and couldn’t eat throat-unfriendly food. =P

They cook the food right out in the open and bring it into the dining area for you. There’s a huge array of food for your consideration: All kinds of vegetables, meats and seafoods on skewers. All the food is spiced with interesting Chinese spices including peppercorn and something salty and herby.

You can get Chinese BBQ in Geylang. Lots of little shops there, usually called 羊肉串 (mutton skewers) because that’s probably the main attraction. The ones in Singapore, however, are limited to a few kinds of meat and no veges save for corn.

Check out the stuff we ordered in Ah Sheng!

Mushrooms and mid-joint chicken wings:

Eggplant:

(Look like fish, doesn’t it? Haha.)

Prawns:

(They have the giant ones, like three or four times this size but I didn’t dare order them.)

Enoki mushrooms:

Below the mushrooms are chives:

Shishamo and Taiwanese sausages:

Corn:

Buns:

Quail:

(The item on the menu said Little Bird (小鸟) so I ordered it out of curiosity. It wasn’t so nice, though, and it looked a bit scary.)

The meal was just amazing. It was the first time in my four days in Changping that I overate. You definitely have to try this if you go to China. It’s not only in Changping. Many other cities and towns have them. You’ll find hawkers on the streets (main roads as well as alleys) BBQing in the open.

There was a pretty female singer in Ah Sheng carrying a guitar in her arms and an amp on her back (like a backpack) walking from table to table asking if people wanted a song. Of course, she would put the amp down when singing, but once done, she’d hoist it upon her back again. It’s quite cute!

She has a menu of Chinese song titles and each song costs 10RMB (S$2).

It’s like a mobile jukebox!

There was a table with, like, gangster boss types, that ordered 10 songs in a row, so we got to enjoy lots of free songs, heh.

After she was done there and came to our table, we ordered one song. (Because we only had one 10RMB note among us. The rest of our cash was in big notes.)

After our table no one else ordered anything.

By the way, this was the night we got accosted by the little girls I mentioned in Star Blog this week. It was after dinner while we were walking back to the hotel from this place.

(It didn’t happen in an alleyway, though. It happened out in the open by the main road, which made it more remarkable.)

Anyway, I’m loving Changping despite the pollution and scary little girl predators. Definitely gonna pay another visit soon. =)

Hard Rock Hotel in the City of Dreams. Sounds like a fabulous place to spend a weekend, doesn’t it?

It was a very last-minute decision. Our very original plan was to stay in Changping for three nights, then Zhuhai for three nights, plus walk over to Macau to spend a day sightseeing.

Due to my falling sick in Changping and other things, our plans kept changing. In the end, I impulsively decided: “Let’s spend our last night in Macau!”

I figured I could afford to splurge for just one night in expensive Macau.

We booked a room in Hard Rock Hotel in the City of Dreams, which is an entertainment hub consisting of hotels, casinos and various attractions. One night there is about equivalent in cost to five nights in our Changping hotel suite. LOL.

But I think it was worth the money spent. I felt so pampered. Everything was so glitzy and luxurious.

The Hard Rock Hotel Macau lobby was a welcoming sight with the funny, friendly quote.

After checking in, as I clumsily tried to push my 30kg luggage towards the elevators (it was so heavy it wouldn’t go straight and kept veering to one side), at the same time also carrying my laptop and heavy handbag, a young, handsome porter came and asked if I needed help bringing that upstairs. Hehe.

He brought us to our room on the 25th floor.

No, that’s not the porter. That’s the Goonfather.

And the room, ohmygosh. We had received an upgrade to a suite! Ooh! The suite is so cool I wanted to stay in there the whole day and not go out.

When you enter the room, the entrance walkway splits into two paths, one leading left to the sitting room, the other leading right to the bedroom and bathroom.

I felt like a suaku as I turned my head left and right like a hyperactive rabbit, unable to decide which side to visit first.

Well, I’m very easily thrilled like that. One of my good points.

The living room:

There’s an iPod dock where you can plug in your iPod or iPhone to play your music with the room’s sound system.

The mini bar has a full set of equipment for making cocktails, although we didn’t get a chance to use it. I wouldn’t have known what to make, anyway.

When we went back to our room in the night, we found a bucket of ice on the counter waiting for us. Love the thoughtful service!

Oh, that’s Elyxia in the picture! She came from Hong Kong to spend the weekend with us in Changping, but she didn’t get to stay in Macau with us. She had to take a ferry back that evening because it was Sunday and she had to work the next day. Sad. :(

Anyway, let’s look at the view from the window wall. The view is amazing!

Next, the bed and bath:

I love how the bathroom, toilet and basin/counter are all separated instead of lumped together into one room. Easier for sharing this way!

A lot of thought seems to have gone into designing the rooms. I love the little touches, like this guitar embroidered onto one of the pillows:

There’s also free wireless in the room, which is very useful!

While I was busy gawking and taking photographs of the room, the Goonfather and Elyxia were busy playing with the helicopters they had just bought in Zhuhai before we crossed the border into Macau.

Silly people!

By the time we were done settling down, it was already 5 pm. Not much time left to do anything. (Our flight back to Singapore was 10 am the next day.)

We went downstairs for a late lunch/early dinner (we didn’t eat lunch because it was a mad rush finishing up in Changping and then taking the three-hour car ride to Zhuhai).

Downstairs, everything is interconnected to everything else. You get easy access to the casinos, the shops and the restaurants.

I couldn’t take much photos downstairs because the casinos are everywhere. The restaurants are like smack in the middle of gambling areas, like, open view, so you can see people gambling while you’re eating.

But I got a picture of the Hard Rock Shop!

I bought a whole bunch of accessories there. =D

Okay, sorry, it’s not a very good picture. We were all hungry and I didn’t want to spend too much time taking pictures.

After dinner, we played a bit of jackpot and then Elyxia had to leave. The Goonfather and I stayed with the jackpots until 8:30 pm, then I had to go back up to the room to work.

Star Blog deadline, heh.

It was good, though. I mean, I so enjoyed our suite that it was a pleasure to work in there!! I didn’t use the business desk. I lounged on the couch with my Macbook on my lap!

I want to have a house like this when I grow up!

Um, that is, I mean, in the future, when I am richer. LOL.

By the time I was done with my work, it was almost midnight. The Goonfather and I went back downstairs for supper. MacDonald’s was the nearest we found.

Sadly, the Big Mac in Macau isn’t as nice as the Big Mac in Singapore. It’s a bit saltier and the “special sauce” doesn’t taste the same, like more sour and less sweet or something like that. I’ve tried Big Mac in a few different countries and I still prefer the one in Singapore.

I’m not much of a gambler but I love playing jackpots because the newer types have mini games and interesting bonus features that I enjoy so much.

We found two machines that are very fun!

One is Monopoly, where, if you get a certain combo, it goes into the Monopoly game board and there are tiny men running about. One by one, they will randomly dive into properties, which will increase your game credits. Some of these properties, which you get to pick randomly, have hotels, which increases your earnings.

It’s fun when the little men dive into squares like Community Chest and Free Parking because you get to pick cards and receive special bonuses!

Another fun one is like Bejeweled. Every time you get a match or combo matches, all the matched icons will fizzle away and the remaining icons will drop into the blank spots (like Bejeweled).

If the newly-fallen icons make more matches, you get more credits for free (without having to spin again). If that happens four times in a row, you get seven free spins (five times and it’s 10 free spins, and it keeps increasing). And these free spins can be compounded if you get more free spins within your free spins.

What a crazy game!! So fun.

Um, unfortunately, we lost money in the end. T_T But I think the fun was worth the money lost. I treat it like spending money at the arcade centre, lol.

Okay, some last photos of an electronic mermaid!

There’s a lobby area at our hotel with a giant tank on one wall. Most of the time, it’s empty. You just see blue water and you can’t tell whether it’s real water or not.

The Goonfather actually went to touch it. It’s real. He got a shock. Haha. It’s like a thin waterfall covering the screen. Or maybe the whole screen is made of water. I don’t know. The Goonfather didn’t dare to put his whole hand in.

If you’re lucky (or if you stand there and wait long enough), you’ll see a mermaid swim out!!

We got lucky. We saw it as we were going back to the room for me to work.

She looked very real!

She swam around for about five minutes and then she made a sort of a dive inside the water and, poof, she disappeared, as if diving into a vortex of water that swallowed her up.

Nicely done!

That was it for our stay in Macau. We had arrived too late and had to leave too early for us to see anything else. (Plus I had to work.)

I still enjoyed it very much, though. Would like to visit again and stay longer to see more things!

I have mixed feelings about this place.

It’s a restaurant where everything you eat is grown in-house, including vegetables, livestock and seafood. The Cantonese-style cooking is superb and you can be sure your food is fresh.

The restaurant is situated in the farm itself, so you can take a tour and see for yourself the vegetables, the animals, the fish… before they are removed to be cooked.

I think it’s read as Hui Li (or Li Hui. I don’t know). That’s the name of the farm-restaurant, or whatever you call it. It’s situated in Tangxia (a very small town in Dongguan, China).

It’s not that you get to pick what you want to eat and they slaughter it on the spot for you. I think the owner allowed us to wander about to visit the animals because he knows Isaiah, our friend who brought us there. (But maybe he allows people to walk around anyway because he seems the friendly, easy-going sort.)

It’s just that it’s a little weird seeing the live counterparts of the animals that you know you’ll be eating later. I feel a bit guilty, even, although I’m not about to get all noble and swear off meat forever.

I still enjoy eating meat. I just don’t really want to pay them visits and grow attached to them just before I eat them, you know?

This goose was playing with a hanging hose. It was rather cute.

I think we had a goose dish at dinner.

We didn’t order chicken.

We saw a bunch of black chickens that had really funky hairstyles. The Goonfather thinks this one looks like Unker Kell:

Running chicken:

We also saw two rabbits along the way.

We rationalised that, since there were only two rabbits in the whole place, they must be pets rather than food.

The pigs were quite smelly. And scary. Because they oinked a lot. And they were enclosed in a rather dark shed.

But they weren’t as smelly as the elephants we visited at the zoo two days later.

These are little black pigs (or something). We ate them. Not them in this picture, specifically, but probably one of their brothers who had already been slaughtered.

Normal pigs:

You don’t see the animals if you just walk into the restaurant and hang around there. (The animals are deeper into the compound.) What you see will be the eating areas, lots of greenery, and tranquil, still waters.

And the food.

Goose:

Vegetables:

Bean curd:

Pork:

Fish:

Since it’s Cantonese-style, nothing is spicy and everything is less salty than the usual Chinese fare we ate most of our trip (mainly Hunan-style and Sichuan-style). But it’s still tasty. You feel a bit healthier eating here.

But I guess I still prefer the spicy food. There’s a Hunan restaurant Isaiah brought us to in Changping which was great but they didn’t allow me to take photos so I can’t share them. But I did take pictures at another Hunan restaurant so I’ll share those another day!

There were a few interesting (scary) encounters I had in Changping which I might or might not have blogged about, depending on my mood. But this week’s Star Blog gave me the opportunity to talk about those encounters. Heh.

Read here: Scary Chinese nationals

In other news, I just arrived home in Singapore. My trip wasn’t as slow and relaxing as I had planned it to be. When I was there, I couldn’t resist going sightseeing because the Goonfather tempted me with things that sounded too interesting to miss. We visited Window of the World and Changlong Zoo (pandas!).

Those took up a lot of time because of the travelling required.

In the end, I didn’t even have time to go shopping. No shopping!! I didn’t even have time to soak in the bathtub every night like I had planned. I only got one soak in on our last night and that was only for 10 minutes. Haha.

Anyway, I’m really tired today so I’ll leave it till tomorrow to blog something interesting. In the meantime, please read my Star Blog. =P

Ta Ta!

Eight-Treasure Rice from a Hong Kong style cafe:

Beef tendon ball noodles:

My third dose of ginger coke:

I’m recovering so fast it’s unbelievable!

A rather old-fashioned sleazy-looking hairdressing salon:

We went in there because I wanted a place to get my hair washed and blow-dried and this was the first we found after asking at many places.

The massage skills of my washer sucked, though. I was thinking I should have just washed my own hair at the hotel. It was a far cry from the last hair-washing service I tried in Tangxia.

But my hair stylist did a pretty good job styling my hair so I guess it was worth it after all.

He gave me cute curls by swinging my hair round and round itself while blow-drying it. It was quite weird but it worked! Hehe.

A wash-massage-style session like this costs between S$3 and S$7. Takes about an hour. The difference in price is in the type of shampoo/conditioner you chose, I think. I had a bit of trouble understanding the guy. I chose the S$7 one.

Walking out into the street fresh from the salon:

We were about to find a taxi to take us to our next destination when the Goonfather spotted a Singapore Restaurant (lol):

Look what she’s wearing! Sarong kebaya! Haha:

Random photo across the street:

Got a cab! Still liking my hair:

We decided to check out this toy building we passed by the other day. The outside looks so cool and exciting:

But the inside looks like a warehouse:

It’s a toy wholesale building, lol. It’s quite empty, though. Hardly any customers, many stores are vacant, and even the open stores are pretty empty.

The third floor is the computers and electronics floor, but like half of it is vacant. When we reached a segment where there were open stores, I thought the Goonfather would be excited, but he wasn’t. He said everything there is old. Like 10 years ago technology.

He was more excited about the little boy toys, like this jeep with mounted artillery:

And remote control helicopters:

He didn’t buy anything this time, but I think we’ll be going back to the place again and I think I’m going to have helicopters hovering above my head when I’m working at my computer back home.

Looking forward to it.

Not.