day 2- euro zone

opps...some correction on the number of pavilions i visited on the first day. i actually visited 11- georgia, montenegro, sweden, denmark, hungary, finland, turkey, latvia, ireland, greece and norway.

2nd day, i visited 18, all in the euro zone. that was the plan actually. it is impossible to jump from zone to zone all in a day. so planning is really needed. these are the pavilions on the second day- spain, belgium, italy, switzerland, africa, south africa, argentina, croatia, austria, russia, egypt, poland, france, monaco, lithuania, luxembourg, netherlands, and algeria. phew! my legs were so numb and i got a very good sleep that night.

we started early in the morning and by 8a.m. we had reached the metro station on madang road. this is the station with the only line which brings you straight into the expo area. there were less ppl here as well and it is not stuffy.

yup, the queue at 8.30a.m. so imagine if you were to go later into the expo.

lupu bridge-the first steel arch bridge in the world, with the longest span.

no noise- is impossible. as for polite language....you will be amused with the language you hear when ppl scolding each other for cutting queue. it created some drama in a boring line.
serbia pavilion.

this was the first pavilion we visited. came out from the metro station, and headed straight for spain. very unique wicker panels.
the main attraction is of course the sitting doll with changing facial expressions. cute. their shop sells mango tees and tous jewelery too.

austria pavilion. to me, it looks like a space ship.
interactive lcd screen. step on the flowers as you move along and they will bloom right in front of your eyes.
england pavilion. looks good from the outside eh? but i did not go in. it was closed 2 out of the 5 days i was there. when it was opened, the queue was very long as well. so i skipped it.

i think this is romania. skipped it as well.

switzerland pavilion.

the chairlift was not working that day. i think that is one of the reasons why the queue was breeze.

poland pavilion.
inside poland. love their craft wall.

france pavilion.....a good one as well.

louis vuitton has 2 corners and you bet they are crowded. the chinese all seemed to stop moving as soon as they got to the corners hence the congestion inside the pavilion. we bought a french loaf for lunch at rmb25. a filling meal and not expensive.

valuable paintings brought all the way from france.


the netherlands pavilion. this is a very unique open air structure and has a whimsical theme to it. there is no congestion here since ppl can move freely in the structure.
and at the bottom, they put many statues of sheep where you can sit and have picnic or a rest. can you see uncle pek in his white hat munching his bread on one of the sheep??

egypt pavilion.
lots of relics from the museum similar to turkey's.

the white structure is russia while the red one is croatia. queued for 90 mins to get into russia because they limit the number of visitiors at one time. it is the most frustrating when you are at this kind of pavilion.

inside russia.....like a wonderland of plants.

inside luxembourg. no queue at all.

these are still in zone c but at african square. south africa, nigeria, slovenia, angola, algeria and tunisia.
africa pavilion....many smaller african countries have their exhibits here.
inside africa pavilion.

inside algeria pavilion.

monaco pavilion. quite small in size but there are still things to fascinate you.
inside monaco.
argentina pavilion.
they had an exhibition of replicas of clothes and jewelery worn by evita peron.

inside belgium pavilion. i did not know that smurfs originate from that country. do you? they have some cute tees and accessories of smurfs on sale.....and of course chocolate and diamonds.
yup, if you buy diamond there, it comes with special certificate from the expo. are they cheaper than outside? that i cannot answer.

one of my favourite pavilions- italy. we checked the queue in the afternoon and it was more than 2 hours long. then we checked again at night, it was only 30 mins. so off we went.


walls of wine and pasta and spaghetti.

this greets you as soon as you enter italy pavilion.

so that is the end of day 2. reached our hotel at 11p.m. and by the time everyone had taken their baths and washed their clothes, it was almost 12.30a.m. wake up time for the next morning- 6.30a.m. urgghhhhh!!!

1/2 day at the expo

arrived in shanghai on saturday, 4 september 2010 and bought the evening pass to enter the world expo area after 5p.m. cost me rmb90. a whole day's ticket is rmb160. for day's ticket, dad and uncle pek bought senior tickets at rmb100 as they are 60 and above.

on average there are more than 250,000 visitors daily at the expo....and this figure is on the low side. on one of the days we did not go as we knew it was the teacher's day in china, the number of visitors reached 500, 000 (half a million!!). we were lucky as on the days we went, there were only around 250,000. phew! and at some pavilions, the queuing time was more than 4 hours. my longest queuing time was 2 hours. so now if you tell me to queue for something, i can take it easily as i have queued much longer.

volunteers are everywhere to help you so it was very convenient.

food here was generally expensive and most pavilions have their own restaurants. we did not go to those. we bought bread and fruits and just snacked along. you can bring empty bottle and there are water stations everywhere.

security was tight. even at their metro stations, you need to have your bag scanned. they will open your bag and tell you to test the liquids you bring. i tested my sunblock on my arm and i had to show them all batteries i brought for my camera. they did not find my eye drop, i am sure they would make me put it into my eye too.

these are the ticket counters.

they call this forest of flags. can you find malaysia's?

and art sculpture greets you when you enter from gate 6. there are so many gates which you can use to enter depending on which road you get off.

the majestic china pavilion.

hong kong pavilion which is really lousy. there is nothing to see inside. wasted my time only queuing 20 mins. but they gave you a small fan.

the urban planning centre halls. did not go inside. urban developers and architects will surely learn a lot since the theme is better city, better life. they do emphasize on energy saving and clean environment.
hungary pavilion. no queuing.
inside hungary pavilion.

ukraine pavilion was closed that day.

norway pavilion. looks nice from outside but nothing to see from inside.

denmark pavilion.

the famous mermaid statue brought all the way from denmark.

finland pavilion.

inside finland pavilion.

turkey pavilion. they sell their beef kebab at rmb50=rm25. but the chinese were buying like it was so cheap.

turkey brought a lot of their exhibits from museums.

sweden pavilion.
i like. they adhere to the theme and show living in a simple yet modern non-cluttering lifestyle.


ireland pavilion.
most pavilions have lcd displays so it is mostly viewing video clips. notice any famous faces on the photos??

estonia pavilion...did not go.

inside latvia pavilion. their main attraction is the wind tunnel...u know like the one they have in genting highlands? they will put their acrobats and do flying stunts inside. well, we have seen it so it was not impressive to us.

so on the first day, i visited 8 pavilions only but had sort of mapped out the area a bit for the real adventure the next 4 days. so definitely more pictures as we go on the real walk the next day.

here and there

atticus attack again!!! well if you know him well enough, you will know that he won't leave me alone. so here you go.

his latest food craving besides roti boy is this waffle made by snack n candy store (next to kfc tg malim). his choice of spread is peanut butter and kaya. this waffle is really good and fragrant so i am not surprised he falls in love with it. my spread is strawberry and chocolate.

aah....being a model here. this is a notebook sleeve we found in midvalley today selling at 69.90. wonder if cousin yeelin is interested in this? or does she still want a hardcase for her macbook. atticus says a hardcase but i am sure a hardcase is triple the price of this sleeve.
the reason why we were at midvalley this morning was actually for grandma. she went to the international eye specialist centre (isec) here for a minor yag laser op. well she had cataract on one eye again. it was a really minor op which lasted like 5 mins and atticus and i were there with her in the room. just some zapping and then it was done.

we then had nyonya food at one of the restaurants in the gardens. yummy. that was uncle's craving. i think his dinner is nyonya kuih tonight.

this is my elephant leg. i dunno why it is still swollen. i know that i hit that red swollen part with my big yellow bag when i got it out from the booth of the taxi in shanghai. so that is like more than 10 days ago. it was blue and black when i was in shanghai, but now as you can see, it has slowly receded. the swell is hard and round and is painful when you press it. i wonder if i had hit the bone with the bag. but i dun feel any pain when i walk. so am just keeping my fingers crossed and see how it goes for another week.

lodging n travel in shanghai

this is where we stayed for 10 days in shanghai......very very near to nanjing east pedestrian street, which is like the happening street every night.
it is just less than 5 mins walk to the street and metro station. very convenient indeed.
i paid less than rm160 per night for a family room which had 1 single bed and 1 double bed. and luckily, the bed was really comfortable with clean linen. phew! it was not those hard beds you get normally in chinese hotels. they even included breakfast but i think it sucked since dad did not want to go after trying it out for one day.
they changed the towels everyday and leave a bottle of mineral water for each of us.
i am a very satisfied customer.
the published rate for the family room is about rmb500 so i guess i had a good deal online. anyway, you won't be able to get any rooms, they are all fully booked....most hotels in shanghai are during this expo period.

the hotel is called lakeside holiday inn and it is right in front of suzhou river.
well, we did not get a room wit the river view, but it is all right. see the yellow big bag i brought?? well, it was overweight when i flew back. my luggage allowance was only 20kg and my bag weighed 25kg. rmb500 extra charge if i were to check the bag in. so i took out the backpack and threw things inside and use the backpack as my hand carry. in the end, my bag weighed 21.6kg pass.
nanjing street and my metro card. that is our mode of transport besides the occasional taxi ride. taxi ride is cheap as well and metro is cheap too. i took the metro to the airport and the journey was around 1 hour. i only paid rmb7. dirt cheap right?
taxi drivers here are helpful too. once dad hailed a cab but the driver refused to drive them because he said they were on the wrong side of the road and he would had to make a big turn. instead, he told them to just cross the road and hail another cab. it would be cheaper and more convenient that way according to him. how helpful.

gifts from aussie

let's start with an easy post.

my gifts from aunt ginny from australia.
it's not that hard to buy for me if you know what i like. hahhaahha.....

yummy soy crisps. great snacks.

and she got me vogue australia october issue that comes with a big shopping tote. what a deal. but i will have to use the white canvas bag with caution because it will definitely get dirty easily. can i coat the bag while using it?? ;P

we are going to have satay tonight for dinner.

ni hao....some facts on the trip

ni hao.....i am back!!! it will take some time to arrange my photos and i bet it is going to be a headache sorting them out...but i will do it with patience because those are my precious memories of the trip. so now...some ramblings first.....

• aunt ching fong, aunt ginny, uncle and atticus came to pick me up at the airport yesterday. lucky me. then we went to klcc for some shopping and dinner.
• 
  
• i am worried that the home pc might collape anytime because of atticus. he has changed some settings and this morning, as soon as he woke up, i have given him a stern warning. if he does anything to the pc, i am going to bring the whole cpu back to bidor with me and he will be without the computer for the whole week. serves him right!!!!
• 
  
• shanghai is huge!! the population in shanghai is more than the population of the whole malaysia!!! so imagine the crowd everywhere we went.
• 
  
• we queued everywhere....at the world expo, at the restaurants, at the toilet, at the places of interest.....
• 
  
• food is cheap in shanghai.....but not clothes or shoes or sunglasses. a pair of GUESS? sunglasses was priced at rmb2000++. crazy!!! it is about rm1000
• 
  
• the chinese are very very rich!! when talking about car loan....they asked- what loan?? apparently they buy their cars with cash.
• 
  
• zara store was super crowded although there was no sale! the youths were choosing the items like they were dirt cheap. so tap into the chinese market if you want to get rich. if only 1% of the population buys your goods, you can make it already.
• 
  
• orders do not apply to the chinese. you tell them not to jump queue or make noise, those are exactly what they would do. we had more than enough of that at the world expo.
• 
  
• oh, i could go online at the hotel....with a fee of course, but i could not get onto facebook or blogger.....because........google's licence has not been renewed by china. sucks.
• 
  
• i went to the expo for 4 1/2 days. the half day was on the first day when i bought the evening pass and entered at 5p.m. i had visited 74 pavilions all together....that i think was a personal achievement since i have heard horror stories of ppl queuing for more than 4 hours to enter 1 pavilion. the longest i queued was 2 hours. phew!
• 
  
• did something illegal there...........bought tickets for the china pavilion from a young tout aka the black market. to enter the china pavilion, you have to queue from like 2a.m. to get reserved tickets.....they start distributing at 8.30a.m. and within 15 mins, they are all gone. so how to fight with these ppl?? we paid rmb350 for 3 tickets into this pavilion. the other pavilions have no ticket system.
• 
  
• walked till my legs went numb in the evening for the first 5 days because of the expo. definitely more than 10km a day. not kidding or pulling your legs.
• 
  
• breakouts on the forehead...face is in a horrible state now. left hotel room at 7a.m. and only came back at 11p.m. everyday.
  

ok that's enough for now. all the photos will be coming up soon.....

see you 11 days later

tangan gatal. can't help from making one last post before i leave.

my bus ticket to kl on star shuttle from tm to kl. gosh, i hope the bus won't break down.
will get off at jalan duta tol, then my friend will pick me up and we go to subang for dinner. please don't rain also lah.

so chiao ppl
happy holidays to you too and selamat hari raya.

new look for shanghai ;) thank you sunshine

okok....have to rush through this post.....i have to wake up in 6 hours time to head to work tomorrow. one more day to go and then it is to shanghai from 4th till 13th.

very very anxious ah....the bag is all packed....dad will faint when he saw how big my bag is...will post it tomorrow. dad only went with a backpack...you know like normal nike backpack.
i always bring more because you dunno what kind of things you might see and buy when you travel. and i like to bring more clothes too..hahaha...can change everyday mah for better and nicer photos. ok, vain again.

now talking about vain.....u get to see me in my new perm because of this morning's beautiful sunlight through the window. ahahaha....no special effect added ah....well er if you take my aviator as an add-on then that is the special effect loh.


macam got flashlight kan??


you can see the curls better in this one. agree when i say that i feel bouncy?? when i come back from shanghai might have to go for a bit of trimming in front. was in a rush when i went for this unexpected perm. love the colour too. so in a nutshell, love it.

today's fun activity besides taking (ahem) gorgeous photo of myself, it also included a visit to crocs warehouse sale at ikano centre. it started today and will end on 5th september. go if you are a big fan of crocs especially if you wanna buy for your kids. ladies don't have many choices. men's range also not bad. the most expensive pair is rm80 and the cheapest is rm30.

this was the queue at around 11a.m. these people don't have to work ah??? my aunt and i queued for half an hour before reaching the entrance here:
this is how small the place is and look at the crowd lah. some ppl used box to keep their purchase. i did not get any for myself.....can't put my feet into those wide front rubbery shoes. wanted to get their mary jane if there was my size, unfortunately i only saw size 9 in grey.

my aunt got these 2 pairs...the slippers is hers and she said she wanna give the pair of black mary jane to siew for her to wear at work. i hope siew can fit lah. one pair is rm40 and the other is rm30...but i dunno which. both also from kids range.

after the crocs purchase, i quickly rushed to my appointment at vista while aunt met her friend. the doctor said everything is fine with my eyes....but the left eye is slightly drier. so i guess i have to put more artificial tears especially when i am on the plane. but it would be better if i sleep, then i dun have to put at all.

so aunt met her friend and got her daughter's macbook pro 15inch.




very light indeed for the size. should go and get a pouch keep the notebook. i will see what i can find here in malaysia or in china.

okokok time to sleep. hope i can go online in china. keeping my fingers crossed for a smooth trip.

dad called from nanjing and told me he would be taking saturday's morning train to shanghai. so i will be the one waiting for them at the hotel. i am scared that i might not find my way to the hotel.....scary ah...my first time travelling alone. hopefully my chinese can help me find my way and i will hail a taxi driver who knows where i wanna go. pray for me ah. thanks in advance.

in curls now

for someone who has been having short hair for a long time, keeping the hair till the shoulder length is quite an achievement. and not going to the hairdresser for the trim is also quite a torture. yes, i feel so uncomfortable trying to chart the date and reason to go to the hairdresser. well, i don't go to the hairdresser for a wash or styling, i only go for a cut.

so today, i could not stand it anymore and picked up the phone to call if i could go there and then in the afternoon at around 2.30p.m.

the answer was a yes and so i went.....and i sat there till 5p.m.

yup, my head.....i had a perm!!!! whatever my hairdresser suggests i follow. i am a very obedient customer. i was only thinking of a trim and then i could go home to continue marking papers. but he had other plans for me. my head felt so heavy in those rollers. 17 of them all together. he has not done so many curls on his customer's head before and i am the first. usually they do this type of perm on much longer hair and only uses 12 rollers. my neck had to support the heavy head for 15 mins.

then i had to dye my hair too. i don't think i want a head of curls but with all black hair. it will look so awkward.
so when the clock reached 5, i had to rush him and i went back with my hair still wet.....unfinished blow-dry. i did not even pay! kids were waiting for me to start the 5p.m. session.

i only went back to pay 2 hours later.

and the costs? did it cost a bomb??? you decide.........

this is the result......don't you love those curls?? well, i do and my whole head feels so bouncy. it does not make my hair looks shorter. so i am glad. the kids did not give a huge reaction.....that means this style is acceptable. phew!

er...if you want to see the hair with the face you have to wait lah. can't show the haggard look.

got this tube of curl booster and retention cream too..................

i dunno how much the perm is. i dunno how much the dye is. i dunno how much he charged me for the cream. he did a little trimming and layering....but i dun think he is charging me for that kan. so all in all i paid rm240. i think it is a very reasonable price. in aussie it will be A$80. in euro it will be 60 euro and in pounds it will be less than 50 pounds. hehehehe........cheap???

ok i am back in tm now actually. i have the one-week post lasik check-up tomorrow at the curve at 11.30a.m. aunt is going to meet her friend there. i wanna check out crocs warehouse sales too which is starting tomorrow. see if i can get a pair of slippers since mine is almost nearing its death. then i have to start packing for my trip to shanghai tomorrow.

dad is in hangzhou now and he is taking the train to nanjing tomorrow. he said the weather is like malaysia. so it will be shorts and tees....and of course a dress or two muahahaha. i am going to meet him on the 4th. i need to calm down to pack so i dun forget anything. i have made a list but sometimes you never know.....


this just shows how greedy i am. a friend was distributing her wedding biscuits and asked me if i wanted eastern or western flavour. i answer i want both. i love cakes and i also love the egg tart. shhh.....don't tell the others i got both ha. hahahaha.....

nite nite now........no need to wash my hair for few days kan? 3 days enough or not??? i think i will only wash it when i am in china.....dirty? err...have to retain the curls and colour lah! or else the rm240 will be wasted.