after spending an idyllic day in the slow-paced zhuhai, it's time we moved on to its faster-paced cousin: HongKong! the next morning, we woke up at 7am plus and we got ready till around 8am. it was then that we heard some activity outside our room: the typical Singaporean sounds. we din have to open our door to realise our 'homies' were ready to go to HK as well. i consider this an coincidence as it was previously planned. so we asked if we could tag along with them to head towards HK. it was a fortunate move as we din really knoew which ferry terminal to go to, much less which boat to board. so, in a Singaporean-rowdy-confused-hectic-rushed manner, we took a total about 4 cabs and headed towards the ferry terminal. apparently it costed each cab between 13 to 15 RMB. once we reached the ferry terminal, a fluster of activity started again. as most of us did not have enough RMB to buy the baot tickets, we have to chip out whatever we had and borrow from the 'richer' ones. another thanksgiving for tagging along wif them! one interesting observation: only the women were doing the math (disclaimer: i'm not a feminist!). well... as you can witness from the vid below...
and after some interesting commotion in front of the counter, we blissfully boarded the boat, or marine, or ship or yacht. whatever. well... i have to hand it to myself for my self-taken portrait of myself sleeping. some may call this narcissim to saturation point. ok, i have to agree:) below is a video of the man-made torrential waves outside the jet (yea, i need a thesaurus...). enjoy!
yea as you might have wondered... i intentionally attempted to capture the image of the pretty jet attendant in the vid:) without spending any excess time, we hurriedly took a couple of photos at the HK pier and just like amazing race, we scouted around to find our way to Ocean Park. by a stroke of luck, and a pinch of unwavering streetwise-equals-keep-asking-your-way-around spirit, we managed to get really cheap tickets. most of the GT staff decided to head towards Ocean park before heading towards Nu Ren Jie, the famed shoppinf haven for ladies! a mother-son duo went to disneyland instead. and the boss, with all his wealth and affluence, went to dunno wad place. as for my family and i, we headed towards ocean park and kinda decided to stay der till it's closing time at 5pm. this is however, not without first trying out their roasted delights after we alighted at ZhongHuan from the MTR.
the meal was however, the start of the day's unpleasantries. my mum started grumbling over the food and complains how sick she felt. so i tried to comfort her by trying to reassure her that her condition was not as bad as Kamen, who gets nauseous just from reading on a bus. well, from her perspective, i'm trying to designify her complaints and she bore grudges. so when we reached the ocean park after taking bus 629, which took approximately 20min, we headed towards the cable car. den later my folks noticed a sky tower, and since it was en route to the cable car, they decided to go there first. after passing me 3 copies of the ocean park guide in different languages each, and 4x800ml bottles, they walked briskly to queue up. leaving me behind despite of my repeated pleas (while still having a really bad sore throat...) for them to walk slower. naturally, i was fumed. when i asked them why did they not wait for me, my mum simply accused me for not keeping up with her, and walking slower than her even though she was sick. i was seriously aggravated and told her to try carrying the same amount of things i carried herself before she blame me for walking to slow. then she interpreted it as i was complaining to them for carrying so much stuffs. so in her usual fit of anger, she grabbed the stuffs from me and accused me for being unfillial. like... huh!? then the queue din nothing to help but to gave them time to keep reprimanding me, and culminating my aggravation. so when they finally got into the sky tower, i simply abandoned them and went elsewhere. then i was doing my calculations: alone, foreign, an hour jet ride away from zhuhai (where our hotel was), 0 RMB with 20 odd SGD, no hotel room key. perfect scenario for a 'damsel' in distress. but i wasn't as wooried as i was pissed. so after tking a walk for sometime, i sms-ed jack and told her about my situation and complained about my mum. you could never imagine how comforting it is for her to have responded so quickly, despite being an overseas sms when you're in a plight such as this. hey, though it's been sometime slready, i'll still like to say... thanks silly jack!
by the act of God, fortunately, my dad called. though i was only partially counting on that as one of my options to get out of this mess. so i kinda reluctantly accepted his call and agreed to meet them. if he decided to take on an otherwise more reprimanding tone o0ver the phone, most prob i'd have rather swam back to zhuhai than to meet them. so i waited for them at the cable car's station. and although i was pissed, i was still touched by the sight, as always, of seeing old couples still holding hands decades after the first day of their marriage. so, angry as i was, i knew i won't regret taking a snapshot from behind, of them holding hands.
then i played my part as a 'FILIAL' son and decided to just hang out with them for the rest of the day. although, thanks to my self-centered, i'm-the-center-of-universe. no-one-shall-enjoy-themselves-if-i'm-unhappy mum, i was seriously feeling very upset, i just tried to get over it. so after we had a really tensed up cable car ride, spent with silence between me and my mum, i took a couple rides with my dad including some free-fall stage, roller-coaster, pirate-ship, spinning swings, and sth called Eagle's Nest, where you simply sit inside this eagle-shaped cabin and it just spins you around. that last one is really boring... haha!
cable car scenario
pirate ship in the background
ferris wheel
pete's favourite side dish with beer. this gonna last a while....
aboard black pearl!!!
after the thrilling rides, we decided to tone down a bit and go for the less heart-challenging ones, such as appreciating God's underwater creation in a 3 storey aquarium. i must really applaud the designer for having coming up with this concept. just like doing a visaul B-scan, the tourists gets to appreciate a miniature, yet very rich presentation of the underwater world as the trail brings the tourists to another level of surprise, literally, storey by storey. as the pathway ventures us into the deeper layers of the aquarium, we see different types of marine species. ranging from stingrays, turtles, sharks, and different types of pomfrets. oh my... do they look delicious!
after the interesting showcase of marine animals, we went to watch a performance of the dolphins. yea it's true they could perfrom many endearing tricks, but it's still a little too boring for me. it'd have been better if they could add in a couple different types of species, and they dun keep narrating stories that i could barely understand. it's not like my canto is very fantastic. haha!
after the show which started at 5pm, it's time we headed out to the exit. it was only then it dawned upon us that there was only one way in, and one way out to and from the ocean park. when we came, there were about 5 flights of handheld escalators and we had to travel the same way down! oh gosh! haha! and so we played the human-sea-squeezing-game. the objective of the game is to get into contact with as amny people as possible simultaneously and overtake at least 3 human blockade within 10min. no simple feat! den we took back 629 and thank God for the seats! we took the MTR (yes, it's spelt M-T-R) to Mongkok and hunt for really nice and famous wonton noodles. we did came to a yummy stall, but it wsn't quite as wad we expected. the wonton was 2 huge lumps of wad looked like avalanche. the chu chang fen was excellent! the rolled up rice sheets were super springy, and the natural sweetness of the rice complements just perfectly with the flavour of the sauce. kudos to taste and texture!
after the fantastic meal, we went for a walk. my folks wanted to buy souveneirs for some of their friends back in S'pore, mainly teacher irene for lending us their winter clothes.
and as we walked, we den saw wad defined HK delicacies! they had an assortment of different types of food, a bit like our 5 spices, but with much greater variety. and guess wad i saw? smelly beancurd!!! oh my! IS THIS PLACE HEAVEN??? then i requested to buy it but like all shits we encounter in life, i was flatly refused by my folks. one simple reason: i've got a really bad throat. at that point of time, i felt like i had travelled thousands of years ago and told Moses that i had understood wad he felt like when he saw the Canaan land!
being a fervent fan of optometry, i was inherently attracted by the first sightings of optical shops since my trip to China. it was like looking at the face of a long-lost lover in a foreign land. though well...it's quite a few lovers. there were much more in Macau, i assure you. and i will prove it to you. then we came across this Guilinggao shop. my mum and thot that it'd be be a good idea to take in some nutrition for our throats. at least it could compensate for my Canaan land (land of milk, honey, and smelly beancurd). but i had an unexpected reward. the shopowner reprimanded my mum for adding honey despite of her cough. yes! revenge!!! how i love the forthrightness of hongkees! love 'em!
after wad i would say, an exciting HK 1-day trip, we headed back to ShangHuan via the MTR and went into this building where we took back a ferry back to Zhuhai. time for a good sleep and we shall embrace the beauty of a Portugeuse-culture-filled Macau!!!
i write
Hello my name is jonathan chen. glad being able to start (yes...again) another blog after previous failures... pls read this blog with your own discretion. hope the cynical ones will take them with a pinch of salt and the gullible ones just believe them.
