The Toilet Restaurant from Taipei, Taiwan has come to HangZhou. The toilet dining concept is about sitting on a toilet seat and serving your food on a toilet bowl, a bath tub, a bidet or squat bowl, practically, everything you see around you has nothing to do with a real restaurant.

ShenZhen has one already, and the Taiwanese owner plans to open the network of toilet-themed restaurant across the world and more is to come in China. I hope they skip this city - Shanghai!

HangZhou, China:

HangZhou branch. Photo credit: ChinaDaily

Interior decorated with toilet seats and sinks. Photo credit: ChinaDaily

Taipei, Taiwan:

These photos were taken from the main toilet themed restaurant in Taipei. Just don’t order the brownies like curry

First Toilet theme restaurant in Taipei.

Taiwanese style Curry in Western-style toilets bowl shape

Ice-cream in China-style "squat pots"

It has been 2 days since the 7.8 magnitute quake happened in Sichuan province. We were in Shanghai when we heard about the earthquake. My sister was working as an Expat in Chengdu, Sichuan, when it took place. We were extremely worried about her safety as we could not contact her after the quake occurred. All communication broke down and only partially recovered 2 hours later. She said the commercial building she was working in was shaking violently. Everyone was hiding under their desk. After the shaking stop, they immediately climb down the stairs out into the streets where it was safer. At night, she did not return to her apartment fearing aftershocks might cause the building to collapse. Most of the people were sleeping on the streets and in parks.

At the roadside…

Ground floor of office building…

Sleep inside the car…

This tragedy will be a real test of the chinese government’s ability, especially since the Olympics will take place 3 months later in the capital, Beijing. So far, we have been impressed by the government’s prompt response. On the first day, chinese premier, Mr Wen JiaBao flew to the hotzone of Sichuan to direct the rescue efforts himself. Unfortunately, rescue efforts have been slow due to the rain and landslides. It was very sad to hear that many children and students were trap in the debris as the schools collapse.

Despite all the despair and confusion, there have been instances where rescue efforts prevail over the testing conditions. A group of tourists were saved from cable cars left hanging 50 meters above ground due to the brave efforts of rescuers.

It is during times like this that the best of humanity is on display. The story of a nurse helping expecting mothers recover from the trauma is especially touching as her own child is still missing. The scene where the chinese premier harshly instructed the army to step up rescue efforts after visiting quake victims was equally touching as well. A volunteer chose to put aside his grief of losing his wife and son in the earthquake to help others in need.

Ok, we are off to Kuala Lumpur today for the Chinese New Year holiday in China. Although our flight to Kuala Lumpur was at 12 midnight the next day, we left Shanghai at about 2pm. Normally it only takes 2 hours to drive from Shanghai to Hangzhou. However, the recent heavy snow meant that the highways could be sealed off and it might take longer for us to reach the airport. Fortunately it stopped snowing and the trip to the airport was pretty smooth although it did started to snow lightly just as we were about to reach the airport terminal. At this point we were worried that the snow might cause our flight to be postponed or worse, cancelled.

In the car to HangZhou. Traffic jam in the journey… It tooks about 3 and a half hours drive today because of the snowstorm.

AirAsia advertisement can be seen everywhere at HangZhou airport.

HangZhou International Airport

Most of the flights are either canceled or delayed.

Lots of people were at the Hangzhou airport waiting to go home for the Chinese New Year. With no where to sit and 7 hours to kill, we placed our bags on the trolleys and sat down on the edge of the trolleys. We literally had our lunch on the trolleys. While waiting, we saw a group of Taiwanese arguing with the airport officials. Apparently, they were upset that their flights were delayed while another later flight took off. The airport official was having a hard time dealing with this rowdy crowd and had to call the security in the end to help calm them down. Two airport officials were pushing a trolley among the crowds offering hot water.

2 hours before midnight, we checked in. There was some confusion during the check-in as some of the passengers were confused about the way AirAsia charges for check-in luggage. The AirAsia flight we were going to board was the first flight from Hangzhou to Kuala Lumpur. There were quite a few AirAsia senior personnel there to make sure everything went smoothly.