Alpha's Summer Adventure

You need to make more time for sleep and less for sexy time. :mrgreen:

Stop climbing things. :lol:

Bonkers’ mother decided to buy him a sword which he then used to hit me in the back of the legs with. He then continued to hit things on the souvenir stand and a man relaxing with a fan

Also is that the whistle you bought Bonkers in that video? Christ I bet that gets annoying. His mum must be so pleased that you bought him it.

\o/

Last edited by Alpha eX on Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Zenigame wrote:
Bonkers’ mother decided to buy him a sword which he then used to hit me in the back of the legs with. He then continued to hit things on the souvenir stand and a man relaxing with a fan

Also is that the whistle you bought Bonkers in that video? Christ I bet that gets annoying. His mum must be so pleased that you bought him it.

Yeah, that was the whistle thing I got him. He actually dropped it off the boat! Not only his mother but the rest of teh tour group were happy, I had to stop him going in for it!

That last picture of me climbing those statues you quoted. When I did that, I got A LOT of attention from all the tourists, I was actually posing for photos when Antonia took the picture. I was up there a while so that everyone could get a pic.

Oh and after I got down, this is what happened...

Also, these videos are taking ages to upload. Will leave it on over night and hopefully have them up tomorrow.

What happened? Did you post the wrong image link?

Edit - Ah you fixed it.

You're a bad example Alpha. :lol:

Zenigame wrote:You're a bad example Alpha.

We actually ran after they started climbing just incase one fell down and I got the blame. :lol:

That 3rd goldfish pic is amaze. Did you get any clear shots of them suitable for wallpaper?

Alpha - A bad example to Chinese kids, guaranteed.

Apha I have been trying even more Japanese snacks this week! Have you come across an anime series called Lucky Star? I made some awesome cookies based on the series HERE. As I type I am chewing on some Chocolate Dutzumi which are these mochi chocolate filled things! Bit off texturewise but nice nonetheless! You come across any specially cool snacks?

Your climbing of things has become my favourite thing about this adventure. :lol:

Climbing on probably sacred and priceless stuff = Win

I finally uploaded the videos I took in China. Because youtube is blocked out there, I couldn't upload them until now.

Shanghai - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9877&p=705770#p705770
Hangzhou - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9877&p=715598#p715598

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I'm going out to buy Shark Pouches tomorrow so if you want one please put in a request for one as they are limited in supply. Also, please check out the shop thread in my signature if you want sweets.

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Rog wrote:That 3rd goldfish pic is amaze. Did you get any clear shots of them suitable for wallpaper?

Sadly not but I do have two pictures that make nice wallpapers, you can find them here: http://madebyluke.com/misc/images/desktop/ - If you see any good pictures that might make a nice desktop, let me know and i'll upload the high res version.

Jim wrote:Apha I have been trying even more Japanese snacks this week! Have you come across an anime series called Lucky Star? I made some awesome cookies based on the series HERE. As I type I am chewing on some Chocolate Dutzumi which are these mochi chocolate filled things! Bit off texturewise but nice nonetheless! You come across any specially cool snacks?

I've had some great snacks so far, discovered how great Meiji chocolate is! Uploaded some pictures for you and please, keep the suggestions coming as I love sweets!

Meiji Gateau Chocolate - 6/10

Not too bad, looks better than it tastes. I expected the centre to be soft and creamy but it was a bit tough, still tasted great but not worth the premium price.

Meiji Lemon Chocolate - 10/10

Un-biased Perfection. A thin chocolate bar with a soft, creamy lemon filling. The sharp citrus, sweet taste of the lemon cuts well into the dark chocolate to create a perfect mix. Well worth the asking price, i'm getting another tomorrow. Fantastic.

CUBE Citrus Soda Mint Gum - 8/10

A fun chewing gum from Japan with a great taste. The peices are little cubes which stack neatly into the box. They're full of flavor which bursts in your mouth as you chew. The citrus flavor is minimal next to the overpowering soda flavoring but still retains it's sweetness. Would have been better if the flavor didn't fade so soon as the addictive taste forces you to eat more and more until they're all gone. Pricey too.

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Going to try and do a few more updates. There's the last of the 5 day trip followed by a few smaller updates from the last few days. Currently snacking on the large bag of sweets and chocolates from a recent visit to Okashi Land, a large Japanese sweet shop.

nice blog m8

Really enjoyed the last couple of updates.

You really are a bad influence on those kids with all your climbing. :lol:

Great thread, looking forward to the next update.

+1

For a new page.

Cya, China
15-07-09

Failing to wake up early, we had to rush to get washed, dressed and then put out the suitcase all within half an hour. We didn’t do so well and ended up with just 15 minutes for breakfast before having to run to the bus in time to leave for our first stop of the day, the Tea Factory.

More Pictures

We wasn’t happy about having to wake up so damn early just to go to another factory. We got off the bus and just waited around in the shade while the tour guide spoke about the area, which was actually pretty scenic compared to the other places, it was a traditional building surrounded by hills and trees, very nice on such a beautiful day. We ended up in a room with many chairs, presentation time. A guy came in and gave a long boring talk about tea, Bonkers wasn’t impressed either.

Me and Antonia snuck out of the talk early to go wander around a bit, leaving Bonkers sitting quietly with my DS. We had a look around the area which was a lot more interesting than the lecture.

More Pictures

The factory visit ended with a visit to the shop where most of the tour group bought some tea. We didn’t get any but Antonia did kindly replace the little statue things I broke but in double the numbers. We got back on the bus and drove almost two minutes to another car park to see some ham, i’m not joking. It was optional to stay on the bus but I wanted to see what the fuss was about. We were last off the bus and reached the stairway down to the ham shop when one of the girls on the tour ran up holding her mouth as if she was about to vomit.

The smell was strong and choking, it was awful and I couldn’t stay down for long looking at the preserved ham. I went up and was chased around the car park by Bonkers who was trying to hit me with the clapping devices we foolishly got and gave to him from the Kung-Fu show the previous night. Back on the bus and half an hour later we pull up on a bridge, no one or nothing around, just a view.

I wasn’t sure why we stopped here, the view wasn’t that great but it was nice to stretch our legs for a bit before getting back on the bus and heading for the next destination, Xihu Tiandi.

More Pictures

Xihu Tiandi is a series of gardens around the West Lake in Hangzhou. We were given free time here to go off and get lunch before meeting back to leave for the airport. The gardens have a few restaurants and cafe’s to eat so we went off to search for food. We passed a sign pointing to Haagen Dazs and immediately went there to get ice cream. The decor was really nice, sort of like a green house.

More Pictures

I forgot to actually take a clear picture of the ice cream but we had the same as we did in Beijing, some sort of fruity sundae thing, It was really good until some idiot came in, sat in the booth behind us and started to smoke. He was told off by the staff but still ruined our ice cream. We left with plenty of time to explore the gardens, it wasn’t long before I came face to face with a lion!

More Pictures of the Gardens

We ended up in a coffee shop deep in the gardens where we got proper food for lunch. We both got pastry things, I got something with a sausage in it and Antonia got some ham thing which burnt the hell out of my lip when she offered it to try.

Picture of the Smoothie

The highlight of the lunch was the amazing ice smoothie type drink, Berry Short Cake flavour. It was incredible and I really hope they sell them back in the London branches of Costa Coffee. The picture is in the spoiler box above. After lunch it was back to the meeting point and back on the bus.

It was a long ride to the airport and quite sad to be leaving so soon, I was having a great time on the trip and didn’t want it to end. We eventually arrived at the Hangzhou airport, much smaller than the one in Shanghai but still quite busy. It took a while for the tour guide to sort out all our tickets so we waited and played DS with Bonkers and his sister until we could check in. We then looked through the few duty free shops and got a bit of rest before the flight.

The flight was very quick, less than 2 hours but still enough time for one last horrible airplane meal. I had some sort of Chicken Pasta dish which I couldn’t eat, Antonia had something else so bad it has vanished from memory. Bonkers was seated in front of us on the flight and was being a bit of a pain in the ass, jumping all over the place, driving his mother insane. I kindly lent him my DS which instantly calmed him down for the rest of the flight.

As we landed Bonkers returned the DS and thanked me, prompted by his mother, who had decided she would buy one for Bonkers. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that I introduced him to gaming but it should help his mother get a break and allow her to spend more time with the daughter. We left the plane without a the health check team and were at the baggage collection in no time where we said our goodbyes to the tour guide and Bonkers’ family. We didn’t spend too long hanging about at the airport, we got a quick snack from Burger King and then hopped on the Airport Express into Wan Chai to meet Antonia’s driver who took us home where we got some much needed rest.

I had a great time on the trip. It was great to see old friends in Shanghai, that was a great day, a lot of fun and excellent food. The rest of the trip was good but not as interesting as Beijing due to the lack of major landmarks to visit. Next to Shanghai, Wuzhen was the highlight of the trip. The little town was like no other place i’ve visited in China, just like a little oriental Venice, still traditional in it’s ways yet slightly and not too drastically adapted for the modern age.

That’s the last little trip I will be taking while i’m out here as I only had a double entry Visa for mainland China. It was great to visit Beijing, Shanghai and the other places, the tours were great, as were the tour guides and members. It was fun meeting lots of different people and their crazy kids, Cyrus, NDS Boy and Bonkers made the groups memorable and the frequent factory visits bearable. I’m back in Hong Kong now with just over a week before I go back home, quite sad thinking about that...

Alpha eX wrote:

I think it's great that they named the airline after a pokemon.

Corazon de Leon

That came to my mind as well. :lol:

You should have ridden that tiger statue!

Bloc Mickey at Times Square
16-07-09

We managed to catch up on rest for the most of the day and decided to go out in the evening for dinner and desert. We hadn’t eaten much all day so was very hungry, we left for Causeway Bay, our favourite place to shop and eat.

Causeway Bay is a great place to explore, shop and eat. There is a variety of shops which range from shopping malls full of brand named goods to small local malls with many stores selling all sorts. There are many restaurants in the area and one of our favourites is Azabusabo, a Japanese Restaurant which is popular for it’s wide range of Japanese style deserts but also serves pretty good food. (It’s all about the desert)

The menu has a large deserts section and then some special dishes shown on posters around the place. Take a look at the desert menu, it’s great! My favourite so far has to be the Ice Cream with Cinnamon, Caramel on top of a sweet potato alongside the Strawberry Kakigori which is a large bowl of Crushed Ice covered in Strawberry sauce with Ice Cream on top with more Strawberry sauce.

Deserts Menu

We ordered our food with a special drink, Kyoho Grape Ice Cream Float, it’s a lovely, sweet, full of flavour grape soda with Ice Cream and Grape Sauce on top. This came before our food so we ate the ice cream before it all melted.

Our food took a while to arrive, not really that long but it seemed like an age as we were so damn hungry. Mine arrived first, Curry Pork Cutlet with Rice. My favourite Japanese dish, I love Katsu curry dishes, Chicken is better but they only offer Pork with Curry and Rice here.

Antonia’s dish came next, The Supreme Eel Set which in my opinion, is awful. I really don’t like Eel but if you ask her, “it was amazing, the eel was perfectly flavoured and the rice was... Japanese... which is very good...”

Dinner was far too filling and we couldn’t handle desert. I think it’s because we ate too fast which is a shame as the desert here is great. We decided to take a walk and looked around the LCX Centre again to do some clothes shopping. You can read more about the LCX Centre, here

We spent a while in the Namco Arcade, played a few games and got some Sticker Photos done. It’s the best arcade in the area, very clean, has a nice atmosphere, modern games and all working machines. After the arcade we stopped off at the 7/11 to get out of the rain, we read the Weekend Weekly magazine, which details the cool things to do in Hong Kong where we saw an article about a new art display in Times Square which is in Causeway Bay. We never knew about it, the last we saw it was a giant chess set for father’s day. We made our way over to Times Square to see the new art display.

The display was quite large, it took up most of the main space in Times Square. The display is only here until August when it’s taken away. The display is showing urban graffiti style Mickey Mouse and Disney characters as seen around New York, I think.

The first thing we noticed was the giant deformed Mickey Mouse statue, I think this was the centre piece. It was quite freaky and seemed like it had melted.

Next to the deformed Mickey Mouse was a smaller, normal looking Mickey. I really liked this statue, the colours and pattern was cool, reminded me of a Qee Bear Keychain.

Over the other side of the display was a giant pair of Mickey Mouse Shoes and Gloves. A lot of people were posing with these so we had to wait before we could get photos on these, when I posed with the hands by leaning on them, the whole thing wobbled, worried I’d knock it over, I didn’t climb it for the great photo I had planned.

There was one more statue in the display, another weird Mickey Mouse which looked like a pot from Zelda crossed with Bomb-omb from Super Mario with some wings poking out.

I’m glad we read about the display tonight as we would have either missed it completely or came across it during the day when it is busy and swarming with people. I’m sure we’ll pass it again but at night, it seemed to have much more of an effect and highlight the urban style of the display.

I took quite a few photos of the display, here are some more.

We got home quite late and had a long chat with Antonia’s parents about our trip in Shanghai and around China. Antonia’s father didn’t seem to want to talk to me much about it, in fact, he didn’t seem to want to talk to me much at all but Antonia’s mother had no problem talking with me. I’m not winning her father over at all, not good.

Today was nice and relaxing, just the sort of day (well, evening) that we needed after the trip to Shanghai. The food was great, we really love Azabusabo, if you ever go to Hong Kong or even Tokyo, be sure to check it out, try the desert (Kakigori or Ice Cream with Sweet Potato)

Must try to sleep early tonight as we have to be up early tomorrow, Antonia and her mother have to be somewhere and i’m tagging along to grab breakfast and wait for them to finish before we can go out for the day.

Alpha's Summer Adventure

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