Beyond the sunny island

Bangkok Trip [Part 2]

We started day 3 by visiting Madame Tussauds in Siam Discovery Center. It seems that they have a lot of props for photo moments over in this place compared to their counterpart in Hong Kong.

I managed to grab air tickets to Bangkok during one of the Scoot's weekly promotions on a Tuesday. Fortunately, the earlier demonstrations have toned down and the bigger scale demonstration is from 13th Jan, so tourism is not much affected. After landing in Suvarnabhumi Airport, we spent quite some time queueing for the immigration customs. After clearing the customs, I managed to purchase a prepaid SIM card before leaving the airport via the City Line.

Day 5 [19th Dec]: Chimelong Safari Park

For my last full day, I was panning to visit Chimelong Safari Park in the morning and then go to Baiyun mountain in the late afternoon. When I reached Chimelong Safari Park, I was enticed to purchase the combo ticket which includes Chimelong Crocodile Park at just ¥30 extra. That obviously means that I had to give up the plan of visiting Baiyun mountain.

Day 4 [18th Dec]: Chimelong Resort

It's finally a full day of clear skies, so I headed my way to Chimelong Paradise as planned. After travelling on the metro for almost an hour, I reached Chimelong Resort area and walked to Chimelong Paradise, which is less than 200m away from the metro station.

Day 3 [17th Dec]: Guangzhou

According to the weather forecast, the rain will stop somewhere in the afternoon. So, I planned my day such that I will be least affected by the rain. I started by visiting 中山纪念堂. While it was quite a good photo spot from the outside, I wasn't that excited about the visit inside. It's more of a photo gallery with story-telling.

Guangzhou Trip

Due to some issues with my cancelled AirAsia flight to Penang for Chinese New year, I ended up using the credit for a flight to Guangzhou instead. I was actually contemplating between many destinations, e.g. Thailand or Chengdu. Eventually, I decided upon Guangzhou as the weather was less cold compared to most other parts of China and transport in Bangkok may be slightly affected by the demonstrations.

My first leg of the flight was to fly from Singapore to KL with a 3 hour buffer to the next flight. Fortunately, I had a comfortable buffer otherwise the long immigration queues might have given me some problems. From KL, I flew to Guangzhou and reached at 8pm+. After exploring around the airport a little, I bought a prepaid SIM card for ¥100 and took the metro to the city. From 公园前地铁站, it was very easy to find my hotel after about 5 to 10 minutes of walk. In fact, I found the hotel before I was even seriously looking at the address. After checking in and settling down, I prepared my day pack for the next day before I took my rest.

Day 7 [25th Nov]: Shanghai and back to SG

For the last day of our China trip, we went to Nanjing Road in the morning to have our breakfast and walk around. We settled for our brunch in 南翔馒头店 and ordered some other dimsum dishes that we did not try the day before. The 大馄饨 sure tasted fantastic and so is the chicken served in wine sauce.

Day 6 [24th Nov]: Shanghai

The day started with a slight drizzle and we were thinking of visiting 老城隍庙 before heading to Shanghai Happy Valley. We went to 老城隍庙广场 to have our breakfast and it was quite a feast.

Day 5 [23rd Nov]: Hangzhou to Shanghai

We started the day by checking out of hotel and taking a public bus to the railway station. After collecting our train tickets, we walked in the district in search of breakfast. We settled for some noodles in a muslim halal restaurant called 兰州老字号正宗牛肉拉面. The beef noodles and the dumpling soup sure tasted great.