I disappeared off the web because I’m seeing someone in Shaanxi last week. Yes, he is Chinese, ever stayed in London for 6 months, he don’t speak English and was actually born in Xi’an – a historical place to the southwest of Beijing. The moment I touched down at Xi’an XianYang Airport, I was very excited and looking forward to meet him and discover a bit about Xi’an.

Xi’an city view from the top of the City Wall.

The city was one of the four Great Ancient capitals of China. It used to be called “Chang’an” and has been the capital of some most important Dynasty in Chinese history. There’s a saying: “Rome in the West, Xi’an in the East!”.

Before I meet Mr. Yong, the first thing that all visitors and I would see is the old wall surrounding the city. You can rent a bicycle and cycle on top of the walls around the entire city. The 3,000 year old wall is entirely intact and it’s one of the few that remained in China.

It takes about an  hour cycling on top of the old walls with exciting sceneries including the modern interior city and the sometimes dilapidated outer city with spring blossoms surrounding the walls.

Meeting Mr. Yong and climbing the City Wall are the 2 to-do things that I wanted to complete during my stay in Xi’an. He is the prime example of a great soldier! I admired his unwavering faith and commitment.  He never complained, never quivered and never gave up protecting the country.

OK… His full name is Bing Ma Yong.

The terracotta warriors.

They are indeed magnificent!! No pictures or photos can describe the feeling of seeing them personally. I’m pleasantly surprised time and again with the delicate details. It has been said that going to Xi’an and not seeing the Terracotta Warriors is like going to Egypt and missing the Pyramids!

The Terracotta Warriors.

The warriors were arranged in a actual battle formation. These soldiers are part of the vanguard and do not wear any armor at all.

The first warrior in the 3rd row was restored from broken pieces. It is said that it takes an archaeologist 1 year to piece together a single warrior. The warrior in the 2nd row looks rather “well fed”.

The grumpy old balding guy in the photo was the farmer that discovered the terracotta warriors back in 1974. To get his autograph, you need to fork out RMB150 for a book about the terracotta warriors.

It’s best enjoyed with some initial knowledge of the Terracotta Warriors’ history.

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There are 2 ways to get a better view of the Giant Buddha…. there’s the view from the boat for those willing to fork out RMB50… and there’s the view from the opposite bank for a mere RMB1.

Obviously, being the scrooge that we are, we chose the cheapest route available.

After looking at the Giant Buddha up close, we set off to get a better view. We got onto the local public bus No.13 from the Dafosi station. The bus fare cost only RMB1… plus you can slowly take in the local scenes from the leisurely ride.

Get down at the JinBeiYinZuo bus stop.  You find yourself in a street bustling with activities.

Across the bus stop, you should find a Cinema and a fast food outlet… KFC… (what else ) … KFC seems to have penetrated every corner of China

Continue walking down the street, cross a junction and you should come to a fortified river bank (did the Great Wall extend all the way to Leshan!?!?)

From here, you can take a boat ride to the opposite bank for RMB1. Or you could swim across… we saw some chinese swimming in the murky river… beware though! the river current is rather strong!!

On the boat with some Mongolians? Tibetans?

The opposite bank seems to be an “island” made up of sand and smooth rocks. One of the many activities to engage in on the island… kite flying.

Another favourite pastime of the locals… Mahjong. There are easily 30~40 busy tables on the island.

The rocks are kinda tricky to walk on… in the background you can see the Giant Buddha. To get a better view at the edge… walk on!!

Don’t be fooled and take the narrow and seemingly flat path…

In Sichuan, the taste of the food is spicy, very spicy or veryyyyyyyy spicy. Even the tofu puddling is spicy.

Someone swims across the river and lost her bra…

Now you got the view!

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Leshan is about 1.5 hours drive by coach from Chengdu. It houses the Giant Buddha which is something rediculous like 71 meters tall, 1200 year old World’s Largest sitting ancient statue of the deity. It’s carved out of a hillside in 8th century and looks down on the confluence of 3 rivers in southwestern Sichuan province. Glad that this Unesco World Heritage site was undamaged by the nation’s strongest earthquake that hits Sichuan last year.

We bought our bus tickets from Chengdu tourist bus station, RMB 49 per head. The first bus starts at 7.30am. At the counter, we were asked if we wanted to go to Leshan town area or Leshan Giant Buddha. The trip to the town area cost RMB43.

So we bought our tickets to the Giant Buddha which turn out to be a 6-pax mini van. The van brought us to this side entrance that cost RMB150 for an entrance ticket, which include another scenic area – The Buddha Paradise, whilst the entrance fee for the Giant Buddha is only RMB70.

We read in the internet somewhere that some so called “public” bus will travel to the Giant Buddha scenic area from Leshan Tourist Bus Station. However, they will drop passengers off at the side entrance instead where the ticket prices of the Buddha Paradise and Giant Buddha is bundled together. It is probably a private arrangement to drive more visitors to the less known Buddha Paradise. Unwilling to fork out the extra RMB80 for the other scenic area, we took this tuk-tuk car up to the north entrance for RMB 10.

The tickets also functions as postcards. You can find a post box on the top of the hill, just behind the Buddha’s head.

I love how the imposed so many conditions just to justify describing them as the World’s Tallest, and World’s Largest.

I have to say, this wasn’t my first Giant Buddha experience.

Tian Tan Buddha, completed in 1993, was the World’s Largest (again) outdoor bronze seated Buddha statue on a lotus, whilst the
Lingshan Buddha, completed in 1996, is the World Tallest bronze standing Buddha statue weighing over 700 tons and 88 metres high.

The great masterpiece is carved out of a cliff that faces Mount Emei scenic area. There’s an old saying: “The mountain is a Buddha and the Buddha is a mountain“.

Another attractive place is the side of the Buddha’s head. You can go up there directly through a plank way along the cliff and appreciate the engraving art, by seeing his hair as worn in icing embedded with stones.

This statue is so old that even weeds grow inside it’s 7 meters long ears!

The precarious staircase zigged and zagged down the cliff, bringing the Giant Buddha into sights at different levels. The stairs were really small and slick!

The giant Buddha is not the only scenic area. From the entrance, walkways takes you along paths that bypass other Buddha carvings, statues, temples, cliff tombs and caves. There are loads of steps up and down high hills making the rounds in the parks a tiring affair.

We met some local tourists visiting the giant Buddha. Mostly senior citizens with a tour group, each one had a square coloured, numbered tag attached to their cloths.

It is a pity to see such graffiti at the Leshan Giant Buddha scenic site. The Giant Buddha have been around for more than a thousand years. We really ought to try our best to preserve these historic sites and let future generations appreciate them.

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Almost everyone knows when you come to Chengdu, you see panda! But most people wouldn’t have a clue about the history of Chengdu. Chengdu was a place where bronze culture originated, a place where Southern Silk Road started and a place where the earliest paper currency was printed! Chengdu also lies in a center position where you can visit lots of interesting attractions in Sichuan like Jiuzaigou, Er-mei Mountain, etc.

On this trip, I’m in Chengdu to discover Leshan Giant Buddha. The photos above was taken from an apartment I stay in Chengdu. The day scene was taken from bedroom whilst the night scene was taken from the kitchen.

See you guys later!

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7 years of hard work and efforts, the multi-million dollar modernist architecture unveiled for 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is now an eyesore. The blaze renderes the 31 story structure unuseable, as the titamium alloy and zinc of the outer structure was burnt!

With 159m height, the building designed by 2 reknown Architect, Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, house a 1500-seat theater, a large ballroom, digital cinemas, recording studios, exhibition facilities, and a 5-star hotel operated by Mandarin Oriental. Koolhaas and Scheeren won the contract in December 2002. Since then, they were plagued by the usual quarrel about the design and spending. The construction started in 2004 and was expected to be completed in May 2009. It’s original proposal was to open to public for events/entertainment and can be used for filming.

The building was clad in Titanium Zinc alloy, which was introduced to China in 1999, a material that would allow the building to rust with dignity and to endure the passage of time better than other conventional metal Zinc. It’s ideal for high quality architectural cladding of roofs and facades. There’s some debates in Youtube and Twitter about why this building did not collapse.

Image by OMA Architect

From Time Magazine, May 2004:

“Detractors cite the $730 million CCTV project as the ultimate example of the Chinese regime’s tendency to plunder state coffers to glorify its own iron authority and say Koolhaas is an opportunist taking advantage of the country’s unique combination of state power and state capital to realize his own artistic ambitions. Ian Buruma, a writer who is a friend of Koolhaas, wondered aloud in the Guardian, a British newspaper, how the world would have reacted if an architect of Koolhaas’ stature had in the 1970s designed a TV station for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

But Koolhaas, 59, who was one of the first Western architects to study and write about China’s urban explosion, revels in such intellectual tussles. CCTV, he insists, like the mainland itself, ‘is in mutation’ and the building represents an effort to complement the state-owned company’s desire to keep pace with the times. CCTV’s current headquarters is completely closed to the public. Koolhaas’ design, in contrast, includes a public ‘media park’ in and around the base of the building intended to foster more interaction between commissars and the masses. ‘We are engaged,’ he says, ‘with an effort to support within [China's] current situation the forces that we think are progressive and well-intentioned… We’ve given them a building that will allow them to mutate.’”

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A fire has destroyed the annex of CCTV new headquaters in Beijing an hour ago. I was chatting with a friend based in Beijing and he told me CCTV was on fire. At the same time, I was in Twitter and Micro bloggers from Twitter are reporting the news. Not only did Twitter get the news before mainstream media, it seems as if it got the news before emergency services. I read it was cause by unregulated Chinese New Year fireworks. According to Reuters, the destroyed building housed the Mandarin Oriental hotel in eastern Beijing, which was supposed to open in 2009.

You can read the news here: CNN, Reuters, Asia-Pacific News, and Xinhuanet.

Photos: Link
Videos: Link, Link

Twitter Updates:

Follow me on Twitter!

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The last time I boarded AirAsia XL promo from Hangzhou to Kuala Lumpur was January last year when we visited my parents-in-law in Malaysia.

With 5 flights a week, AirAsia is the first airline in the Southeast Asia region to provide a non-stop service flight to Hangzhou. They now fly to Australia, Uk, India and very soon to Japan. I was on a 737 (economy class) and it must have been the tightest seat pitch I have ever experienced!

This time, the new aircraft was equipped with in-flight entertainment systems in all seats. This include touch-screen system with lots of entertainment content as well as cool applications, including games, interactive moving map, shopping and in-seat chatting system.

Chatting is free, but you need a small fee to access other entertainment services.

An USB port is also available at each seat for games controllers, or power charging your personal electronic devices. It is said that AirAsia will be the first airline in Asia to deploy OnAir mobile communications services. This will enable passengers to use their mobile phones and BlackBerry-type devices to send and receive SMS messages, emails, and to make and receive mobile phone calls in flight.

The flight back last week was an 5 hour evening flight. I only manage to get an hour nap

I actually don’t prefer AirAsia for long haul.

AirAsia always portrayed itself as having a better, friendlier and prettier cabin crew than other 5 star airlines. But that’s not what I see from Kuala Lumpur to Hangzhou flight. They are inattentive and despite the call light being on for 20 mins, no crew came to attend to you.

The last time I traveled a midnight flight with AirAsia X, there are times when they off the lights for passengers to sleep. All of a suddent, I was awaken by the noisy cabin crews from the back of the curtain beside the emergency exit. They chit-chat and giggled so LOUD that someone had to come up and ask them to lower their voice.

This time, the same flight, same cabin crew… chit chat, chit chat…CHIT CHAT…. so LOUD.  And the other thing is, there’s only 1 Chinese-speaking crew on board. I can heard some crews say “Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese!“, walk away and ignore the Chinese passengers, leaving them with lots of question marks. There was one incident that really surprised me. When the passengers were boarding the air craft and looking for their seats, an air steward was blocking the path of a little chinese girl. She politely said “Excuse me” but the air steward gave her a glance and ignored her. Again she politely asked him to let her through but there was no response. It wasn’t until I stared at him that he let her pass. Does this award winning Airline train their crew this way?

Thank God that I never witness any behaviour like the one below despite the service at AirAsia X.

The coolest cabin crew from one of the airline in China.

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The Chinese goverment spend a lot of effort to correctly translate the Chinese information on notice boards and road signs into English. This is to make sure that oversea tourist feel comfortable and are able to find their way around. It is anticipated that the number of tourists visiting China in 2008 will increase dramatically due to the Olympics being held in Bejing, the capital. While they may have done a decent job in Beijing and other olympic cities, it could be improve at Chengdu. Recently, on a trip to Chengdu, I visited the Panda Research Center again, a popular tourist attraction. The English information on the information boards and signs were, although not misleading, grammatically wrong. The Research Center is a must go place for tourist to Chengdu, why not change the signs as well!

“Caution, falling into water”

“To Pandas”

“Keeping Silence”

“Top One In The World”

And…. I promised my readers to post the Panda clip, here it is:

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I’m attending the 2008 China International Food & Tourism Festival (CIFT) which started today in Wenshuyuan Street, Chengdu. CIFT is sponsored by China National Tourism Administration, China Council of International Trade and Chengdu Municiple People’s Goverment. The festival themed “Food of Sichuan”will last for a month and is the longest in history. Food from other 12 districts are joining the food testing activities too.

Chinese steam buns stuffed with hot soup and meat and/or vegetarian fillings

Chinese sausage and dried meat.

Bugs… insects… I beg you won’t eat this! You have probably seen this in Beijing or Thailand.

More photos…

People in Chengdu are more relax and enjoy life more than Shanghainese and Beijingers. I was surprised at how modern Chengdu was with its skyline. I love to sit at the balcony in the morning and watch those peoples on their bikes going to work.

Since the Sichuan earthquake 4 months ago, Chengdu came into attention once again, not because of the quake, but a series of exhibition, forums and festivals to showcase its new image to the world and to help recover its industries that were effected by the quake.

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Snorkeling is one of the most favourite recretional activities in the club. The activity is included in our package, so we can go for an unlimited snorkeling whenever we like. Maldives has been rated as number one site for snorkeling because of diverse underwater world and underwater visibility to 60m. Reefs are the ideal place to snorkel and examine the contrasting nature of water and marine flora and fauna. It’s a perfect spot for any person to peep into the hidden facinating world!

There are 2 boats going, this is the other

Powderblue fish

Butterfly fish probably?

Parrot fish

Needle fish

A suddent drop off with some fish doing their fishy things

Back to the boat, one of the Chinese got a cut on his leg

Every morning and afternoon, one or two boats headed out from the jetty to various spots with 2 GOs organizing them. We had brought our own snorkeling gear since Club Med lends you gear only when you snorkel with them. The boat took us 25 minutes out into the Indian Ocean. There is a swim test with life jacket on before we took off. On our second excursion, it’s hard to relax and enjoy the fish while pushing other people’s fin out of my face, and try to ignore people bumped into me! There are less people in the morning. However, it was no guarantee of a good excursion. They do not pre-announce what sites are going to visit, but decide on the spot according to currents and etc. There are 2 of the sites we saw were deep – 20m, so if you didn’t do surface dives, its really limited what you could see. Lots and lots of fish, I’m so jealous to hear of many sea turtle sightings because we didn’t saw any.

We went sailing too. Again, swim test without life jacket is a must if you want to do it by yourself. If you fail or doesn’t want a swim test, the instructor will accompany you and bring you out to the sea. You have to be careful about tights. They have times listed on a board at the sailing shack.

Kayaking is tiring! We went kayaking for a few times. When there’s no wind, kayaking is good. The paddles are in plastic and metal. There are some small island that you can paddle to! Once we were ‘force’ (LOL) by Yuta the Japanese instructor to join his kayaking race in the afternoon. So we registered ourself and was exciting and looking forward to it. But unfortunatly, I was doing Paf-Paf and had forgotten the time and miss the race!

Heavy…ok!

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