Candies candies everywhere

Take a look at this!  It was on display in the lobby of the hotel in Singapore we stayed at, Regent…..

yummy breakfast

Yes, another tradition in MFM.  There are lots of cheap and yummy set breakfast.  I had a bowl of macaroni, egg and ham sandwiches and a cup of coffee.  All for MOP32 or CAD 4.10.  YES, CAD 4.10.  Better than Smitty's 5.99 b'fast.  Ha!!! 

snack

Typical afternoon snack at a MFM local coffee shop.  What I had was a cup of "half-and-half" (aka half coffee and half Hong Kong milk tea).  Then a plate of rice noodles with bean sprouts.  Nice….. 

puppet show

This was at the square a stone throw from my MFM apartment.  There were still lots of Xmas celebration.  This was a giant puppet show in the evening.  

18 hours in Hangzhou

We were in Hangzhou for 18 hours to attend a friend's wedding.  Bullet train was great.  Getting the tickets were a bit confusing.  But we managed.  

Here are some pics by the West Lake and the wedding there.  The day was relatively warm, 11C or so.  We had a few hours walking around before the 5:30pm banquet.  The official start time was 18:18.  A symbolic lucky numeric value. Now you get a chance to peek into a Chinese wedding.  It was fun and smoke filled ;-)  Not the filtered type so very strong… our eyes were watery as everyone around us started lighting up.  To give an impression, I took some shots for effect.  Actually, there is an official no smoking inside public building as of Jan 1 this year.  Hee hee…. Old habit dies hard.  Or not ever.  LOL.  

Closer to the end of the wedding banquet, the groom's brother had a friend walked up on stage and recited a love poem.  It was very moving.  We were all surprised.  it was about the eternal love of a newly wed couple.  A story from ancient Chinese time.  Then, an oldest relative walked on stage to give a blessing.   

Morning coffee

After a night of wedding banquet in Hangzhou, we took the 7am billet train back to Shanghai. What a beautiful morning!! I needed coffee. The only thing I got was the instant coffee offered by the train steward. Yikes! 15RMB for a small cup of instant coffee. Haha!! 22RMB can net u a cup of SB regular.

Hangzhou wedding banquet

Friend's bro getting married tonite so we headed to Hangzhou this morning. The train ticket purchase at our town was sooooo easy - NOT!! Last year, for a better efficient customer focus service, we could just walked up to an auto ticket booth, selected our destination and class of service. Stuffed our $ into the machine. Done. Total time last year to purchase was 5 min. Today due to security concern ensuring we live in a H@rm0niOu$ society, we needed to be purchase in person w/ ID card. So we lined up. And true to Fr7369nking C0mmie style, no directions. Only in local language announcements in crapy speakers. The train station was branch new though. So we lined up at the wrong place until I heard something saying "today's ticket is on 2nd flr". Right. Half of the people lined up left quickly heading there including us. Another 15 min later, we were in the platform. Nice speedy trains huh?

55 minutes later, we were at Hangzhou. Nice and sunny. Hyatt was in front of West Lake. Too commercialized. We still like the side of the lake where Shangri-la located.

Then the banquet Chinese style. You can see for yourself. Good food and still cigarettes everywhere. Haha. These were not the ones like Canada. The cigarettes were so strong not sure what other stuff were put in there. Even though there was a national ban for indoor smoking, right. No cigarette, no revenue for your biz . ;-) we had fishes, hairy crabs, pork, shrimps, and turtles. You know, the usual stuff.

As the room started to fill up in thick blue smoke changing the color theme for the wedding from creamy white, we left the building.

The newly wed couple, they were so respectful of the parents they kneeled and bowed to all if them. Seldom to see at these 80's after young people.

Yummy and cheap

Had a quick meal last night across the street. Typical local Shanghainese. Steam dumplings called Xiao Long Bao and spicy noodle. I threw in a bottle of beer for good measure. The bottle turned out to be 580ml!! A bit much. Certainly not for Brent though. Ha!

The total cost came to rmb76 or CAD13. Not bad. I couldn't finished everything. It's a two-pax meal.