So, I started getting really excited this week, I mean, after all, the long-awaited event has finally arrived. My family, due to the financial crisis, haven’t been on a holiday/vacation for such a long time (Well, the Macau one doesn’t really count) that I think I forgot what travelling is like already. In fact, the last trip vacation I went to was Summer ‘07 where I went to a summer camp alone, and the most recent family vacation is May ‘05 when we went to Gold Coast, Australia.

For those who don’t know what’s happening – Long story short, I, along with 5 friends, won a website competition called ThinkQuest, and we get a free trip to San Francisco and a free laptop worth $1500.

What should I eat?

I was looking at my itinerary and agenda and figured out that dinner on Saturday night (when I arrive at SFO) was not included. No, I didn’t freak out. Instead, I thought it was good news because I got to pick whatever I want to eat. I went on Google Maps and started searching for restaurants near my hotel. However, in a country that everybody drives, even the closest restaurant is a mile away. Eating in the hotel isn’t necessarily an option either because of the price.

Soon later, I found out an alternative. Last time I went to California, probably the only thing I can remember is the In-N-Out Burger. It was just… SO. GOOD. PERIOD. There were, sadly, no In-N-Out’s near my hotel (there is like nothing there), but there is one at Millbrae, which is one BART station away from San Francisco International Airport. Then… I found out it costs $4 just for an one way ticket to Millbrae, which means it takes $16 on transportation alone. Plus two burger meals, we’ll have to spend like $30 just for eating fast food burgers! My mom was like “WHAT? We’ll spend (HKD)$200 in eating BURGERS? No way!”

So now I don’t know what to do. Should we walk the mile, or should we pay the $16? Just as I was wondering, I found out that there is a bus near our hotel that goes to Hillsdale Shopping Center(judging from its website, I’d say it is quite big), but apparently nobody in America would go out at weekend nights, so there are no buses available on Saturday night. Plan screwed up. Again.

Then, my mom suggested we’d bring Cup Noodles with us to America and eat them for that night. But of course, that suggestion is quickly rejected by me, and this time even my dad’s on my side.

I guess, we’ll just have to see when we get there. Perhaps we’ll just end up with a McDonald’s Big Mac.

What should I pack?

You see, when you travel with your mom, you don’t get to pick your clothes. Technically saying, with San Francisco’s 12-20`C degree, I can wear short pants, but no, my mom decided that it is too cold (note: only for her) for me as well to wear short pants. But can you really imagine, long pants in a 20`C afternoon?

That’s not the most painful part yet. Apparently, I’ll need to wear long pants on the plane too! Not to mention that I won’t be able to bring my crocs on the plane (she said too less space in the suitcase). WHAT?

What should I listen?

I bought two albums just then – David Tao’s 69 and Lee Hom’s Music-Man concert. But still, I don’t think that’s enough for my 13 hour trip. I have been asking for suggestions on twtiter and facebook… anybody any ideas?

Alright, now what do I do?

So I’m still packing, still considering what to east, finding good songs to listen. But I am just too excited to settle down on doing one thing!

Anyway, here is some info on my trip:

• Flight AC8 (Air Canada)
• Hong Kong to Vancouver
• stop for around 5 hours
• Flight AC562
• Vancouver to San Francisco
• Arrive at around 4:30pm.
• The rest of the night will be free – remember, I had to find my own restaurant to eat.
• The event officially starts tomorrow morning at 7. Hopefully I won’t experience any jet-lags.

Alright, I need to stop writing now. I should probably finish what I was going to do and get a good sleep. Wish me a safe trip!

Macau was always awesome for me. There are three reasons: Food, FOOD, and FOOD. To celebrate (lamely) the new year, we decided to go to Macau for a day and eat.

My parents decided it was too expensive to travel by ship (when it’s only like what, $200?), so we drove from Shenzhen to Zhuhai, parked the car there and walked to Macau.

Our first stop was at the town hall area where we stopped for some wonton noodles for a “warm-up”. Since it is during the New Year holidays period, it is filled with people.

Oh and look, a bottle of coke!

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I personally find buildings in Macau attractive. They have this kind of antique style, but yet they aren’t necssarily… old, whereas the buildings in Hong Kong can go only two ways: very new (IFC), or very old (Kennedy Town). (Well, I guess that is still pretty good compared to Shanghai, which although contains a lot of new buildings, but poorly managed that eventually turn into old ones very soon)

Anyway, so, onto my trip in Macau. After finishing “warm up”, we saw a famous bakery nearby and decided to look for some Macau specialties to bring back. All the prices were at least increased 10% because of the holiday season, but the things they sell tasted so good that we couldn’t resisit buying.

When our wonton noodles got digested a little bit while shopping at the bakery, we started eating again. We walked to a mini-restaurant thing that sells some really good sharks’ fin. Like, real ones. When we got there, we shockingly found a line of at least 50 people waiting to buy a bowl of it (cost ranging from $50 to $200)

But things aren’t necessarily all perfect in Macau. We walked across a ghetto ice-cream cart and apparently there were a lot of people “buying” ice-cream. It cost $12 for a cone, and it’s a tiny one, mind you. I excitedly took out money and bought one. I chose the mango flavor, and it looks nice. Anxiously, I put the ice-cream in my mouth and this feeling I got from this lovely icecream…. is… kind of different… and special… in a bad way. Turns out, it is nothing more than a simple $3 McDonalds ice-ceram, but it charged 4 times more! I am starting to guess all those people there before were friends of him “advertising” how “good” the ice-cream is. Sigh, just can’t believe how a smart person like me can get tricked like this.

What kind of a trip to Macau will it be if we don’t visit the Ruins of St. Pauls (Ruinas of Sao Paulo)? I mean, EVERYBODY visits the Ruins everytime they go to Macau, regardless of how many times they’ve been there already. Following this “tradition”, our family then started to walk to the Ruins. We took a picture, ate some more Macauese snacks, and left to explore some more places.

After then, we just aimlessly roamed around that area. We booked a really nice restaurant for dinner, and we are all anxiously waiting for it. To prepare for the nice dinner, we all stopped eating so that we have enough stomach space for later. It was called something like a Tomato House, and they make some really good Macuese-Portugese food. The price is much cheaper than Hong Kong’s restaurants (abour $40/person) but the quality is even better. I LOVE MACAU…’s FOOD!

We all walked out of the restaurant with the stomach completely food.. I mean, full, and decided to walk a little bit before going back to Zhuhai. Then, we walked by the Casino Lisboa, and because we are underaged, we didn’t go in the casinoes. But man, not only the outside of the building looks awesome, but the inside too!

And… that pretty much concludes our trip in Macau. It was indeed short, but nevertheless very fun (thanks to the food). You see why I love Macau now?

So… just a quick review of what happened in the last post. We were stuck in a service area because of our flat tire, and we needed to wait for the next morning when we can get visit the local town for new tires.

The technician called for like at least 100 million people and then regretfully told us that there aren’t any tires available for our kind of car. When we are all depressed and stuff, suddenly the technician discovered something: there was a rubber ring blocking the tire to be inserted! He removed the ring and tried to insert our spare tire that failed last night, and it worked perfectly. Wow!

Our family was so happy that my dad ran to the “supermarket” (more like a tiny store) and bought a watermelon for them (which apparently was like heaven’s food for them (remember, we are in central China)) and ate together. Man, my dad even ask me to take a picture of him and the technician! (Sorry for the bad exposure)

After they finished all the final touchups and stuff, we started heading for the road.

And this was the repairing company name – “Shang Rao Service Area Repairing Department”

I must say, China has really impressed me with their highway network. On our trip, we switched to about like 5 highways but never got lost. They have neat signage and a clear code system. Not bad, not bad!

We have around 1000km to go today. The car’s license is expiring at midnight, so we have to arrive at Shenzhen by today. Since we have quite a long journey, we did not stop over at one of the largest city in central China, Nanchang, but to head for Shenzhen directly. We then therefore had to eat in service areas (again). And mind you, although the highway system is neat, the service areas are definitely not. There are flies around and the cafeteria looks just as bad as our school’s. But, what can I complain?

I don’t think I need to tell you again about the scenery and stuff. Feel free to visit my Picasa Album again, though. Oh wait, except for this:

Apparently, there is a town in Guangdong called “He Ping” (pronounced H-ugh Ping), which means literally “Peace”. (Don’t believe me? Check the characters on About.com and compare it with the one in the signage. They are the same characters.) So, in a sense, we are only 26km from peace. (yay!)

So we just drove, drove, and drove, and finally arrived at Shenzhen at 11:30 pm. We were dead tired when we arrived, and decided to find a motel to sleep instead of searching for blankets from our luggage and sleep on them at our new house. It wasn’t bad at all, only like 200RMB (25USD) for a double bed room.

And… that concludes the road trip. Next post: “The Move In” Thanks for reading!

Visit the complete gallery of pictures!

A lot of misfortunate things happened during the trip, such as an (to us, at least) uninformed close of an important highway so we had to find and go another way, flat tires, my dad being really tired (the only driver), etc. But nevertheless, it was still fun. I was at my new house in Shenzhen at the third day, which isn’t equipped with internet yet. I didn’t come back to Hong Kong until yesterday when I stayed in my uncle’s house with a broken router.

But erm well, that’s life. I had a chance to organize my photos, and here they are!

Before introducing anything though, let’s have a look at our car – a Mazda MPV ‘00. There aren’t new features like Cruise, buttons (media controls, etc.) on the steering wheel, or a CD’s managing system (you know how like some cars can have 6 CD’s at the same time), but I like it =).

Let’s begin now, shall we?

We planned to start our trip at 7 a.m., and so I woke up at like 6:30. Ethan showed up at my house at 6:45 to say a final good bye (thanks). However, as usual, my parents “had a lot of things to do” and so we didn’t actually start until 10 a.m. In addition to the late departure, we couldn’t find the right highway to go on (A8, Hu Hang Expressway), and so we made a huge detour in order to leave Shanghai. (Note that “A8” is blacked out on the left sign)

Unfortunately, the weather was REALLY bad when we left (I heard it is even worse after that). Visibility was really low.

Because of the bad weather, we had to stop at Jiaxing for a stop… mainly because my dad decided that it was too dangerous to continue driving in such a bad weather, and that we were hungry for some famous zongzi’s.

Weather was getting a little better, so after a short rest for about 30 minutes, we started the trip again. Skies start to clear up, and we are now starting to see a beautiful scenery.

Road trips are indeed boring – you see the same thing over and over again for the whole day. Other than music from the Jason Mraz CD’s, there were still some Chinglish jokes that cracked me up. For example, a sign saying “Overspeeding Prohibition” (when it truly meant “over speeding prohibited”), or a sign saying “exprots” (when it meant “exit”… I guess that’s because the word “export” and “exit” use the same word in Chinese… and then when they typed it they messed it up.)

At around 7 o’clock, we arrived at Quzhou, a small city located at very west of Zhejiang. It is a fairly small town. We went to a small, suburban, yet very friendly restaurant and had some REALLY nice fish there. Almost comparable to those in Hong Kong.

After dinner, we booked a hotel at Nanchang, capital city of the Jiangxi province. However, on our way there, our tire suddenly broke and we had to call in for a towing truck. It happened at around 9 pm. We tried to use the tools available for us (which was insufficient) to get it fixed, but we couldn’t. They took us to a service area nearby (and my dad didn’t allow to take a picture of the towing truck for some reason). By the time we got there, it was already 11.

Here is when the bad news start. Apparently, the family who owned this car before we did put some heavy custom work on the car in Hong Kong, which made us extremely hard to screw the tire down – the place left for screwdrivers to “get in” and unscrew is extremely tight. We started trying everything we can, including flamethrowers (yes, you read that correct).

But… apparently the wheel was made out of some sort of gold alloy that is basically immune to burning… the flamethrower left a white mark on the wheel, but dealt no damage to it at all.

One of the more skilled technicians was then woke up by the technician that was working for us. He woke up and started making his own thin screw driver that could go in the hole. After about half an hour, he did it. He successfully got rid of the broken tire, and it seems that if we can get the new tire up, we can continue with our trip.

But no, they couldn’t get the new tire up – the car was too over modified that the spare tire didn’t work with the current wheel. Frustrated, my dad decided to sleep in the car and wait for wheel dealers to wake up tomorrow to get a new set of ‘em.

And so we did. By the time we actually slept, it was around 1:30am already. All of us were tired and didn’t care how we could sleep. Just within 30 seconds after saying “goodnight” to everyone, I could hear snores from my sister already.

End of Day 1. Continue with our journey with the next post!