Passion Kuala Lumpur 2008: Fun Times

Other than the spiritual experience, it was a great experience hanging out with the entire MM team! We had loads of fun and hilarious experiences! Wah ah! And I cannot imagine i actually drove in Malaysia! Yes! It was really quite scary at first, the cars being more "tougher" than in Singapore! However, I believed that God will keep us safe from harm! Malcolm gave me the "Guard of Horner" badge, cos for hours they drove up the highway and the roads, they did not use the horn, just minutes after we drove out of the Tabernacle of David Church, I horned a driver cos he was intending to cut into my lane while i was following isaac to go for lunch! Haha! it created quite a commotion in the car. Eric and Malcolm ah.. sigh.. cannot stop talking about it.

And so, I drove round KL and drove back from KL to JB, around JB and JB back to Singapore!

the most exhilarating experience was the petrol incident: sigh we left KL with 3/4 tank of petrol and on our way we took for granted that there definitely will be petrol stations along the R&R points. While i was at 1/4 tank, we started to signal to look out for petrol, no sign of it. At the sign of the empty tank warning, we still could not find any. Both R&R pit stops had no petrol stations. Went on empty tank for a REALLY long while, while everyone in the car were all awake and silent now. And all silently praying i guess. Haha!

And finally came to a toll, the person told us 5km away, and then another toll said, the petrol station will be 8km away off the highway. Wow... the experience could kill.

I had to switch the air-con off, and we sat there in our perspiration, as i just kept driving. Concentrating on cutting the lane to my right quickly and gently enough to not increase my RPM, and also not to lose sight of isaac and also to keep watch on petrol and look out for petrol stations. Haha! Super multi tasking of the season!

Finally, Eric broke off into a song: "Give me oil in the car, keep it running! Give me oil in the car, I pray, I pray. Give me oil in the car, keep it running, keep it running till we reach the petrol station" haha! It was super funny, we all sang along! Finally broke some tension!

And then we saw it, a little blue sign on the left side of the end of the highway... The petrol kiosk logo 1km away. We were happy like little birds and anticipated it! We were stuck behind this little lorry that exhumed black smoke from its exhaust pipe! And I thought to myself, lets overtake him before we consume too much black smoke! and well.. while i over taked on my right, the little sign came up again and there it wrote 1000m away...

BUT it was just round the corner, everyone got excited include MALCOLM and he started pointing and exclaiming for me to turn left!!!! And blocked my side mirror!!! oH man... I had to quickly swerve to the left and when we reached our petrol station, we PRAISED GOD! As if we just touched down from a near crashing plane ride!

It was an experience i cannot forget. Well, this Malcolm had to rub it in to say, all soldiers need to go through the test, before he can get the badges you know, it will not be fun if i so easily got the badge!!! : )

Isaac and Malcolm kept insisting then, that there should be no cause for alarm, and that my tank should have more reserve, so we took note of how much litres we pumped, and it wrote 40 litres. then isaac said, "aiya! like that still can go for more than 10km lor" assuming my tank is a 50 litre one...

So once we reached church, alex asked Jerome, how much is our tank size, and in his face, he said 40 litres.. WAH HAHA!

It was a miracle. We arrived at JB on 40 litres, barely making it at all..

Alex was dumbfounded and called Isaac! Hahah!

Well well... so much for their re-assurance!

Nonetheless, it was a great trip!!!!!

Jewel

Updates to My First China Expedition

It was an amazing trip, escaped from Typhoon and an earthquake. Realised how much home is
the best. Still had some fun with ong though! Haha! These are some of the food we had!

26th June: Dinner @ Quanzhou

This was at the restaurant one of the factories brought us to, great food! ! Quanzhou


27th June: Lunch @ Xiamen

Forgot the name of this place, but its right beside our Xiamen hotel, we ate here before we left for the airport to travel to Yiwu, and its delicious! The mango ice was so huge, we couldnt finish it! Think that Jerome would love to finish it, but too bad he was not around!





My steak looks good right!!


Ong's cutlet rice! She couldnt even finish half! It was really a lot of food!


After lunch, we went ahead to walk around and saw this lady haha! carrying her baby so funny, China style!
28th June: Yiwu in a Taxi!

Thought its really amusing why they need to enclose themselves in a plastic cover??



The huge Futian Market




30th June: Dinner @ Yiwu

We have had several days of breakfast @ Yiwu that was sub-standard, so every other day at Yiwu we ate KFC, until we got really sick and tired of it, we are cup noodles. This town does not seem to have any night supper places, well not that we know of. Until one of the folks there brought us to this Szechuan Mala place! Whoo.. now thinking of it, i am getting hungry.. This diced chicken was hot as in really nice! We already told the kitchen to not use the original "spicy" method, to lessen it a lot for us.. But still we had to drink lots of water.. SPICY!!!

Like a bowl of chili soup, this is fish inside.. Not that fantastic, too many bones!
The nice folks Eric & Rachel! Who brought us here and ate with us despite them not taking spicy food.. burnt their stomaches that day!

2nd July: At Guangzhou Airport

One of the worst carrying experiences ever.. Took a bus here to the Railway station to get to Hong Kong... The bus stopped us a distance away, normally a five mins walk to the station, but becos of our really heavy luggage, we really had lots of trouble.. Sigh..

Thought this was really broken english for an international airport.. haha!

Finally we reached the train station and could get some dinner. This place is really nice! A fast food chinese place! Its called some Kung Fu thingy, but really good food so far as compared to when we were at Yiwu! My fav soup and cabbages were all here!!!


Finally.... on the train to Hong Kong, you cannot imagine how happy we were to leave the sub-urbans and enter into a city.. We really were so looking forward to this!!!

Updates to our travel!

On our 1st night, we ate a really cheap meal! RMB20 for 6 small dumplings like those i Din Tai Fung, Dan zai Mian, Fruits Dessert, Soya Bean Milk, and Tou Sa Bao!!! Haha! And its nice!

First Day in Xiamen, China

This is our very first day in Xiamen, does not feel like China at all, perhaps all the China places that I had been to was the scenic and tourist places, this feels really backward and not interesting. Being the photo person like me, i didnt take more than 5 photos today. Amazing.

Well, its 8pm and we are back in the hotel room, nothing much to do as we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow and we need to re-org.

Went to try the foodcourt today and it tasted really bad.. Though it looked good.



In the end we had to resort to eating Mcdonalds.. Haha!




The traffic is quite scary, nearly got banged by a bus on our extreme right and it was right at my face.. when the brakes screeched to a stop.. phew..



Got "cut queues" by so many Chinese people that I decided no more nice lady here. Funny end to our first day, should go see this "Gulangyu" place that everyone is telling us about. Perhaps on the 27th when we have nothing much to do..

And a testimonial, one of the manufacturers told us that there will be typhoon and storms in Xiamen and Quanzhou where we are heading, and he told us to be careful! So we got Pastor Sally to pray for us, and when we were in the cab, the cabby driver told us that it was good, the storm made a turn and headed towards Shenzhen instead of here. God is good.. May He bless the rest of the journey! Amen!

Love,
Jewel in China, Xiamen Hua Xia Hotel!

My travel log: Bangkok, Thailand July 2006

This year went to Thailand with company and stayed at Pratunam Princess...

Nice place, with paser malams right downstairs...

Actually shopping at the place opposite "Mabukrong" was nice, a young generation touch to the atmosphere..

CHeap shoes too!!! : ) It was interesting to just hop on to the cab and travel around to see where's nice.. Doesnt seem nice to go to the shopping centres to buy things. The cost seems nearly the same as Singapore.. Nothing different..

But the pasar malams the little shops sell unique and relatively inexpensive things..

Oh but I found something that i really liked in Mabukrong.. A japanese figurine with the milk girl and milk boy, expensive.. He mentioned it was limited edition, a little toy shop like our Action City there sold these Japan figurines. The figurine was the shop front of a little cafe...selling cakes and drinks.. so adorable.. like my dream cafe in future..

Jewel's round the world diary...