getting in touch with my chinese roots

here i am at home, nursing an inflamed throat, minor flu & cough, plus the occasional dizziness. not too sure how i fell sick. maybe my body couldn't adjust to the change in weather, from the cold in china to the warmth in malaysia. or maybe it's coz i'd already fallen slightly ill while in china itself & the situation just worsened. *shrugs* oh well. i've already seen the doctor & aside from the drowsiness after taking my medication, i'm feeling better :)

yes...i just came back from china. "visiting my ancestral roots", as what evie would say. hahaha. it was both an amazing...and disappointing trip. amazing coz there were loads of sceneries & cultural experiences to enjoy, disappointing coz of the lack of proper planning on the tour company's side. there wasn't enough time to do proper shopping either. when we were at places worth shopping (like nanjing road in shanghai), we were given barely 10 minutes to shop. when we were at places not worth shopping (like a silly pearl factory), we stayed for about an hour! haiyo...priorities all screwed up. although we did give the tour guide a piece of our mind & negotiated a 1-hour shopping trip in nanjing road, "sacrificing" our 1-hour lunch instead. hehe.

it was an 8-day trip with my family, sans crystal who's still slaving away in canada. poor girl :( our tour group had 10 people, excluding the tour guide & van driver. throughout our trip, we travelled in a somewhat cramped tour van. there was not much leg room for the passengers & the air-condition was barely functioning. and we were practically like nomads, staying in a different hotel every night!

here's what our route was like: shanghai > suzhou > wuzhen > hangzhou > tunxi > huangshan > qiandaohu > lanxi > yiwu > shanghai. the most "excruciating" part of the trip had to be the 5.5 hour hike up & down huangshan! my legs were so sore that night i could barely sleep. the huangshan hike was definitely easier than the great wall of china coz there were proper steps, footpaths & railings.

photos to come soon!