Xiamen Trip

lim peh ka li kong

lim peh and cha-bo-lang with my father-in-law and auntie went to China Fujian Xiamen for a short trip in September 2010.

Apart from the tour sight-seeing, we also visited some relatives.

Upon touching down, our local tour guide 小庄，with a placard in his hand, was waiting for us patiently. We checked into our Hotel, rested for a short while and immediately went out sight-seeing.

* click on photo to enlarge *

The first stop we went was 白鹭洲公园 Bailuzhou Park.

A big pond with a distinctive statue



Lady with the 白鹭鸶 statue

In China, Fujian is known as 福建 as well as 闽南. There's a Dragon boat statue at the Park with the Chinese character of 門 and instead of 虫，the Chinese replaces it with a Dragon 龙.



門 +   龙



Across the Park, there´s a building under construction, looks familiar bo?

Anyway, if you ask lim peh, is there anything special with this 白鹭洲公园, the answer is no, it´s just a Park, a big one though. (Of course, lim peh´s view may not be justifiable as we did not really see the whole Park).

Next we visited 虎溪岩，one of the more famous temples in Fujian. 虎溪岩里的寺庙依山而筑，石穴为室，煞是好看。导游对我们说宏船法师就曾在这里修练过。


一走近便见到大石上龈刻着字

导游小庄叫我们猜这个天然的大石块像什么？

答案是木鱼，有像吗？

 



寺庙建在大石底下

走着走着，我看到一尊漂亮的观音像。

After seeing the Temple, we were brought to a shop selling Chinese Tea.

My FIL and cha-bo-lang are both Coffee person thus lim peh was thinking we were brought to the wrong place and I doubt if they would purchase any Tea leaves.



There were quite a lot of varieties of Tea leaves.

To my surprise, my cha-bo-lang bought quite a lot of the 铁观音，田七花茶和普洱。

x x x x x

We had our dinner at a supposedly famous Restaurant, look at the wiining certificates on the wall.



With all the Certs on the wall, the food can´t be too bad la.


Their specialty dish - 鸭嘴鱼

We saw the Duck-Mouth-Fish swimming around, waiting for their destiny.

lim peh cannot tell you how the fish taste cos we didn´t have the chance to eat it. Our Dinner dishes were just so so.



After our dinner, 小庄 sent us to watch a musical show by 闽南神韵.

We were quite reluctant to watch the show as it was not in our itinerary and we had to pay additional fees but we were told that the show won Silver Prize in the Shanghai Expo, lost to the show by 张艺谋。



漂亮的闽南传统服装

开始有一段手偶表演，注意00.42 开始，两个手偶互相脱掉彼此的衣服 (没有RA级的，老少咸宜）

There were quite a few dancing and I must say we really enjoyed the show, 小庄没介绍错。

x x x x x

The next day, we took a ferry to 鼓浪屿 Gulangyu Island.

There are 2 main attractions on 鼓浪屿 - 菽庄花园以及钢琴博物馆。

菽庄花园 is a big garden which was once owned by a rich man 林尔嘉 but it has been donated to China. The area is rather big and looking at the structure really amused lim peh what money can do.


The bridge (built in 1913) acts as a dam whereby the sea water was captured during high tide.



桥名为四十四桥因为主人翁在四十四岁时建桥

钢琴博物馆

What do we see in the Piano Museum? Lots and lots of Pianos, really 令我大开眼界。If you have a chance to visit 鼓浪屿, you must not miss the chance of visiting this Piono Museum.

After these 2 places, we walked around the island and saw a Spanish church.



Saw a newly-wedded couple taking photos, lim peh also take.

x x x x x

When in Xiamen, one 1 place I will not want to miss is the

南普陀寺

这次厦门行我们有一个小小的遗憾 : 我们没有被导游安排在在南普陀寺内品尝到厦门素菜之首——南普陀素菜。

Xiamen is really hot, the temperature was about 35 to 36 degrees. Tourists like us were taking cover every now and then to avoid the scorching heat of the sun.

Even the birds are hiding behind the Pagoda

x x x x x

At night, we were sent to the 中山路步行街 for our free and easy leisure time. The shopping there is really nothing special but luckily for me and my cha-bo-lang, we found a Bookshop.

Although we had the lousiest Japanese food there but lim peh was quite happy cos I managed to purchase some books that I like.

2 of the books which lim peh like

许鞍华说许鞍华



严家炎的金庸小说论稿

x x x x x

During our visit, my FIL met up with his brothers.

我算了算，四位长辈加起来的岁数高达 297 岁

我也到厦门泉州拜访了我的几位表兄姐。

Lastly, a photo with the Tour driver and the Tour guide.

x x x x x

My thoughts after my Xiamen trip:

Xiamen is not as ulu as lim peh thought. The Shopping paradise in 泉州 is actually as good as the shops in Singapore Orchard Road.

In one of the Shopping Malls, lim peh even saw Bread Talk.

The traffis is unbelievable, there´s no rules for drivers nor the pedestrians, the most daring ones win.

The weather is hyper hot, people not too friendly, food not to our taste but at least something new but overall I was quite pleased with the whole event.

One funny incident happened when we were at the China Airport.

While clearing the China custom, my cha-bo-lang kena questioned by the custom officer cos the photo in her passport differs quite a lot from how she looks now and lim peh think the most crucial reason is her China accent when she conversed to the custom officer is so like typical PRC, duh!

lim peh kong wan liao