Singapore to Nanjing 12 Oct 1045/1550
Nanjing to Singapore 17 Oct 1705/2210
Flight price:
Hello Nanjing! The flight was surprisingly bearable and we got lucky and was assigned yellow seats. Cabbed to our accommodation, Hilton Nanjing and checked into a beautiful room.
Headed to Tong Qing Lou for dinner in the mall right beside the hotel. En route out, we bumped into the Scoot crew who happened to be staying in Hilton as well. Heh. Ordered super lot for dinner, but my favorite is the Fish soup. Total bill came up to about SGD40 only. There's a Walmart in the mall as well so we did a bit of shopping and picked up tidbits.
Day 2
Nanjing to Shanghai on 0935 train 134.5y. By the time we reached the tailor it was close to 1. Choosing the fabric and all took more time but we had a lot to do! Tobs did 2 pants and 6 shirts; I did 4 shirts, 2 blouses and 1 skirt. Then we went to another shop and I got a cheongsam made as well. Total damage: 100y for shirts, 150y for skirt, 180y for pants, 280 for my copy blouses, 680y for my silk cheongsam.
Planned to eat Nanxiang but when we reached, we realized that it no longer was at that location. :( settled for someplace to fill our stomachs and then rushed to the train station (still missed the train and had to take the 1700 one to Hangzhou East 73y). Reached Hang Zhou quite late but managed to get a cab to the hotel (Courtyard Mariott) and reached close to 6.
Dinner was at Grandma's Place at Hangzhou Da Sha. There was a queue but it moved quickly. The queue call is also extremely cute: A43, wai po han ni chi fan le! We ordered quite a lot: 1 grandma's wing, fei niu, cha xiang ji, ma po tofu, jiu huang fen pi, green tea biscuits, walnut pumpkin juice and papaya white fungus juice. Total damage: 146y. That is less than SGD30. We were very shocked and awed.
Unfortunately, food is probably the only cheap thing in China. I did not do any other shopping cos everything else did not seem to be worth it.
Day 3
Visit to Song Cheng. Do enquire with the hotel front desk on tickets. Our concierge gave us the wrong information that the price is the same regardless of where the tickets are purchased so we decided to purchase it at the location itself. Alas, the price ain't the same! We paid 300y for zun bin seats when the same would cost is 280y if we had purchased it with the hotel. Oh well.
Song Cheng is basically a theme park modeled after a city in the Song Dynasty. It is smaller than it seems and you will be able to finish walking around in probably 2 hours? If you want to watch all the shows, be sure to take note of the timings. We missed some 11am show cos we reached later. Watched the Cheng Ren ceremony and the knife throwing stunt show though. The latter is good. The former just involves enthu visitors dressing up and performing a rite.
There were also some good attractions such as the interactive Qing Ming Shang He Tu. There were also 2 haunted houses but I didn't exactly dare to do those. There is also a small amusement park area complete with vertical drop and a few other rides. We took the swing.
Song Cheng Qian Gu Qing is one of the world's top 3 shows. It was quite a good performance with fantastic lighting and special effects. Unfortunately, viewing pleasure is severely tainted by the 90% of the other people in the audience! made up of people from a particular country who do not adhere to the basic instructions to not take flash photograph! not to stand up in the middle of a performance, etc.
We also had the misfortune of sitting in front of a couple with a kid. The parents would annoying point out stuff to the kid and shout aloud what is about to happen next. What a way to enhance viewing pleasure huh. Not to mention the kid has amazing hygiene habits - she sneezed into Tobs and I. Twice. How do we know? We felt water droplets on us and no, it was not one of the special effects.
If you are able to put up with all these negative externalities, the show is quite an excellent one. Unfortunately, I will from thence forth always associate the show to the uncouth people who allow their kids to sneeze into others. 2 shows: 2pm and evening show. Both will be equally crowded with tour groups, I expect. Seats on the left and right block are slightly cheaper 280y compared to middle block 300y. If you are feeling rich, pay 480y for seats in the best rows and get a cup of long jing tea served to you at the last item.
Day 4
When we requested for a late check out at the front desk, the guy did not even bat an eyelid before agreeing to let us have the room till 3. We headed out to get Rikuro cheesecake but it was nowhere as good as what we had in Osaka of course. Then it was onto the bookstore before heading to a mall for shopping. Unfortunately we did not end up with any buys.
Came back and caught the 1618 train back to Shanghai 92.5y and checked into Grand Mercure. They said they upgraded us to an executive floor room but sorry, it doesn't look nowhere as fantastic. I think the Hilton room was the best so far. This room suffers from terrible space planning - the toilet is probably larger than the actual living area of the room. :(
The weather took a strange turn and it became really cold all of a sudden. The winds were also quite strong. I'm quite happy to be returning home soon. As I told Tobs when we touched down, this is probably the only country where I arrive and hope to leave soon. Everywhere I go, there's a sense of impending doom : whether I will get into personal danger, whether my belongings will get picked, whether while crossing the road I will get knocked down by vehicles that don't seem to have regard for traffic rules, etc. I also get highly annoyed and frustrated in this land where no one seem to queue, even the elite. At Hilton, we had a properly attired lady who tried to cut our queue. Then another guy in business suit came and just cut it blatantly by leaving his card on the counter and said "check out!". While at breakfast the day before, some businessman cut our breakfast queue as well. Sigh. All you can do is to grit your teeth and bear with it.
Day 5
We had cheesecake for breakfast cos our lousy package at Grand Mercure did not include breakfast. Then it was off to the bookshop where we bought cheap books before heading to Di Yi Shi Ping Shang Chang. Had Nanxiang (but nowhere as great as the branch in Yu Yuan), tried Xiao Yang Sheng Jian (fat and sick), and meat moon cake.
Then it was back to the tailors to collect our clothes. Unfortunately they were not ready as we hoped and we spent quite a bit of time waiting. By the time we had finished collected (cheongsam not complete still) it was past 2 and we had to catch the 3pm train. There was traffic jam on the way which made it worse. Reached the hotel around 2.45pm and had no chance of catching the train so we took some time to repack.
The most annoying thing about their train stations is the fact that the automated ticketing counters (available exclusively for their own people) is right beside the entrance to the station but the ticketing counters for poor foreigners like us is like frequently 10mins away. The Shanghai one was a wholly different building a street away. (...) took the 1600 hours train 139.5y and promptly fell asleep on board from exhaustion.
Then it was a nightmarish queue at the Nanjing Station taxi stand. We got a nice London cab and reached Hilton. Paid for the additional upgrade for 199y and got club access. The room did not look drastically different though but it was a lot bigger. The bed was like 2m! Thanks to the husband's employee benefits, we paid only 749y:))
It was off to Shi Zi Qiao for dinner but it was damn a long cab ride away. We ordered xia huang tofu (not as good as the last time), duck bun, jing pai jian jiao, yi tong xian, tang yu miao, wang fu pao jiao ji, and green bean. I would only recommend the duck bun and jing pai jian jiao. Those were the 2 dishes we ordered twice. The green bean was a really good discovery cos after stupidly ordering chrysanthemum tea, we observed that many tables had the green bean. When we ordered a jug, it was really good - like green bean soup just thicker, paste form. We finished half and decided to take away the other half.
Day 6
Breakfast in the club lounge was full of privacy. The host made a good cup of cuppucino as well. We lazed about the room as much as we could before heading out to wal mart for last buys and then to lunch at Tong Qing Lou. Had the dun shuang tou again but it didn't taste as good as the first time round. Also had angus steak cubes, xinjiang style roast pork rib, rice crisps in soup,and papaya with hashima. Bill came up to 196y.
En route back to our room with 2 bagful of wal mart shopping, we remarked that it must be the first Hilton saw club room guests being so cheapskate. Heh. Cabbed to the airport and even though we were supposed to take off at 1705, it was delayed due to instructions from Shanghai airport (seriously, I don't know how this air control thing works) so we only taxied close to 1815.
While in the air, there came a point in time when it started to stink real bad and my entire row had to keep fanning away the stench. It became so bad that we buzzed the flight attendant and asked for air freshener. After spraying the walk way with the air freshner, it still smelt real bad and a Singaporean flight attendant, probably leader of the crew, came to make an announcement in Chinese seeking the assistance of all passengers to put on their footwear. It was totally hilarious (not her but the fact that such an announcement had to be made) but kudos to her bravery and innovation. It certainly did what the air freshener could not do.
Overall, I would probably not take another trip here any time soon. My worst travel experiences and flight delays all occurred here. Maybe when the general hygiene and culture changes?
