Thursday, February 21, 2008

Back to the Roots.....Day 1: Xiamen > Shantou

The flight is 815am from Changi Airport T1 by Air China. I went for a 7 days trip to southern China for tour and also to Jieyang in Guangdong(where grandfather was from) with 11 others family members and relatives...We arrived at 6am...looking at the flight information board for departure...i was shocked to find 8 flights by air china departing all at 8am to Shenyang.....is there a lot of Chinese from Shenyang in Singapore??

Nothing much happening on day 1 as the plan is just to land on Xiamen international airport and have lunch somewhere before heading towards Shantou for dinner and checking into the hotel.

flying off and see the whole Pulau Ubin from the sky

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Over Xiamen city

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Saw a vintage plane at Xiamen airport after touchdown

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After landed, I went for a pee and found the toilet to be very clean....even ahve a auto toilet seat cover changer...btw, the temperature is about 8 degree C

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We have our first meal at a 5min drive restuarant away from the airport...which is like an airport hotel....the food is "hokkien style"..so is quite close to what we have back in singapore

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After lunch, we started to set off a long journey to Shantou which takes about 3hrs....We got onto the highway and the journey became smooth and went into many of these mountain tunnels....

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After about an hour of journey, our van stopped at a service station for a short toilet break

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The scenery here is very nice but is very cold because of the cold wind blowing

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There is this huge statues of a lady with a baby in her arms...the tour guide said this symbolises the hope that taiwan will be back in the arms of mainland china

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After another 1.5hrs, we reaches the toll at the boundary of fujian and guangdong

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After entering Guangdong province, we entered the Teochew area and is still 68km away from our destination

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After 30min more on the road, we are near to Chaozhou city which we will be back on our 6th day

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We reached Shantou......

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Traffic is heavy and they have a designated lane for 2 wheelers

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saw meritus hotel.....

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We went to this resturant at their bus station for our dinner...got out of the van and is still very cold...about 7-8 degree C

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10 different sauces and pickles on the table

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As today is the first day of Chinese New Year, we are treated with the traditional 15 dishes that the Teochew will eat for their first CNY day dinner....every dish has a meaning to it....and do not ask me what is it...cos I also forgot liao...honestly, by the 10th dishes wasout, we were done....we struggled to just have a small bite to try for the remaining 5....

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After a shiok dinner, we were transported back to our hotel: Shantou international

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Very nice chinese new year display on the wall at the lobby

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We went out to look around and found Pizza Hut, KFC and MacD at the corner of a junction nearby.....After 15min walk...we decided to head back as the temperature and wind is too much for us for the nite.....

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To be continued for Day 2

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