The avid dancers.....

The avid fans of High-school-Musical and Hana Montana - Ying Hong and Elsa - volunteered a dance performance at our condo's xmas party... the girls choreographed their own routine, and had a few rehearsals in Yinghong's room a few days before.. turned out to be quite entertaining.. even though nt perfect.

Xmas week...

Not sure if anyone else noticed that the Monsoon period is rather dry this year..
Anyway, that's good for all of us trying to have some fun in the last 2 weeks of the year.
Was hoping to go to a nice restaurant to celebrate our 10th anniversary, but BC was not keen. So being a thoughtful mummy & wife, suggested we go somewhere casual but fun.. picked "Mykii" in Holland Village, which is a new Greek-inspired restaurant with white-washed interior brightened up by sofa seats lined with ocean-blue cushions. very refreshing decor.. we love it!
Cocktails are drinks are also impressive, but food is not something to wow about.. there's effort to use fresh meditarranean ingredients, taste is ok, but portion is small, and variety is not impressive.Would be a nice place to come for a drink, and order some food as a side, rather than a dinner place. But to pick one dish.. .it would be either the Baby rib, or the Prawn Caserole (smaller than expected serving).
Saturday was the usual.. Art Class for Yinghong, and BC and I managed to picked up some stuff from Beeyean's place, dashed to eat Katong Laksa at Ceylon road, before I went back to fetch the girl. Her artwork is really beautiful and she looks so happy working on it. Think children are most childlike and innocent when they are doing art & craft....

JiuzhaiGou - other pictures

Picturesque JiuZhaiGou

JiuZhaiGou Natural Reserve Park truly feels like a paradise.. with all the different lakes, streams, rapids, and waterfalls along the long walking trail, and 9 preserved Tibetan villages (thus the name "jiu zhai" which means "nine tribe villages" in Mandarin). Our day long trekking tour to the various scenic spots (heavily serviced by the park buses with guides) in JiuZhaiGou, 3500 metres above sea level, was followed by a Tibetan dinner hosted by a Tibetan household and a cultural show.

more pictures from Chendu Holiday

We were so impressed with the JiuZhai Paradise Hotel that we took so many pictures...

My Holidays in Chengdu....

The rest of our holidays in Chengdu.. sigh.. wasted quite a lot of time.
* Domestic flight to Jiuzhaigou was delayed 25 hours .. boarded the flight 3 times in between, and spent 6 hours in a incredibly shabby hotel, and spent a night in a slightly better hotel. Was supposed to reach Jiuzhaigou on Monday afternoon, but reached there on Tuesday afternoon instead. But once we are on the way from airport to the hotel -- JiuZhai Paradise (JiuzhaiTianTang) -- the scenery rewarded us handsomely... making all the trouble worthwhile.
The next day was even better... a full day in the nature reserve park .

* We went through lots of trouble after that to rearrange our return flights etc. and thanks to Zhipeng and Yangchun, we finally got those settled. The only remaining full day in Chengdu was rather fun too -- went to the Panda Base and saw many "toddler" pandas in a huge cot (no photo-taking allowed there); followed by a stroll in WenShuFang (WenShu Square) area; and a dinner at "Lao Ma" hotpot restaurant where they had a stage with "Bian Lian" performance. This place consists of 3 levels of restaurant area, and a 4th level for tea-drinking (with dim, soothing lights almost like those in a pub), and a 5th level dedicated to displaying antique and cultural display including exhibits that illustrate the daily lives of Chinese people in the past decades..very interesting!

*Our last day in Chengdu, we had a long and nice breakfast at the Tex-Mex grill restaurant (where we'd been there twice before for dinner!) , then ventured to the "Renmin" park to have tea at "He Ming" teahouse. The park also has an area with children rides.. quite fun! But we had a panicky episode when we tried to get a cab back to the hotel to pick up our luggage before heading to the airport -- couldn't get a taxi for almost 45 minutes!
So by the time we got home ... we were really glad.. but still.. am happy that I went for this holiday...

Day 1 in Chengdu

Thought I should put down my thoughts before I forget..
chengdu greeted us with a fine sunny weather, 9 degrees celcius. BC's colleague -zhipeng took off to fetch us from the airport to the hotel --- a unique old style si-he-yuan format hotel named "jing li ke zhan" in "jing li" cultural street, right next to "Wu Hou Ci" (temple for ZhuGeLiang).
Took a walk along jing li street... was so much fun! There is even a starbucks here.
This place is full of street stalls selling traditional crafts -- "chui tang" (blow candy), "tang hua"(drawn candy), bo-si tang (almost like the dragon-whiskers candy) which we bought a box to try.. lovely..like that it's coated with soy been powder so theres this lovely aroma of it, and not too sweet.
Dinner was a "hong xing jiu jia" (Red Apricot restaurant) near Zhipeng's home. Traditional Szechuan fares... yummy! I realied the authentic dan-dan mian does not taste any bit like the ones we have in singapore. No sweetness at all, just spicy and numbness..
Went over to zhipeng's apartment after dinner to meet his wife and daughter.
Got back to hotel, but none of us felt like showering, cos the water is sooo cold. the heater takes a long time to heat up water. Day 2 will be a day to visit Le Shan Da Fuo... will update again.
Pictures to follow..