and now the tiger leaping gorge.
never a river so peaceful..
while raging out of control!!
haha u noe timmy looks a bit stone.
heres a failed panaroma shot i attempted. haha looks terribly weird with the mountain on the left, and river towards the right.
yup after that we went back to the hotel for a MUCH AWAITED rest. the relief is.. indescribable. when i got back i realised my face was really badly sunburnt and peeling so i used vaseline on my face.. like eww. and my nose is still red now larh!! lolol.
dinner was at some dunno where restaurant where they were selling paintings. our group decided to buy some for charity bazaar. yeap. then...
david's nose started bleeding. not the first time.. how about the 5th during the trip. lol. but this time it just didnt stop for like 10mins. but even in this type of situations david can still make it funny larh. like diao. i seriously cudnt stop laffing. and to make it worse.. we asked a waitress for an ice bag in our terrible chinese and check out what she gave us. 
uber funny. upon reaching we had a debrief by the Spring of Love personnel where we discussed stuff we learnt and where most of my reflections came from. basically most of us agreed that they shud have given us more info on clothing and temperature, and perhaps more info about the kids. but life is so simple there that nothing is set in stone and all activities are very flexible. maybe thats why china eastern flights are always delayed. but thats beside the point lol. yeap we also found out that the kids cud onli understand like.. 30% of our chinese. lol but i think it was the same vice versa cos of their accent. but i think it was a good close to the cas.
Day 6 Thursday 27 april
this was the snow mountain day. once again, beautiful scenery, along with its set of jokes. we set off quite early in the morning (what am i saying.. we set of early every day) for Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. along the way we stop to pick up.. guess what.. oxygen flasks. u noe.. i think that its just purely psychological. how can someone sell u a free good for 30 yuan!?!? unrational behaviour. lol. but at the end of the mountain trip we were all getting high on it lah haha.
the queue to get up the mountain kinda took ages. we had to wait for a bus.. so we waited at the entrance to take some pics with the scenery. this one is one of our funnier pics. the guy on the right is me and the foot belongs to david. reminds me of those ancient chinese movies where they fight in the foreground with mountain scenery in the back. i need a dragon ball. 
after taking a bus to the cable car station.. we had to wait.. again. but the cable car was worth the wait mann.
phew!! we're finally at the top. fortunately my shanghai gear was quite adequate and i felt quite ok and didnt die in the snow. and this was the first time i saw snow!!!! how cool. literally. too bad the snow there was kinda chunky and a bit hard. but there were clouds above us and it starting snowing a bit!!! how coooooll. more pics. 
heres weihan's snowball. the purple thing is the cap of the oxygen canister
ahh yes thanks for the pic brendan. LOLOLOLOLOLL.
after our fun in the snow and hurling snowballs and ice blocks (!!!) at each other it was time to go down again. lol we tried to wave to other pple in the cable cars going up. we were as succesful as someone turning to look at us. hmph. dao kias.
phew. then it was off to lunch then we went to another part of the mountain where we could take chair lifts up. more pics. 
at the top of the chairlift there was a little plateau where we cud rent traditional costumes for 5 yuan and take pics.. but of cos dowan lah. we go down nearby and stop to see yaks. 
and its off to the airport. we said goodbye to our guide and then boarded the spectacular short flight to kunming. first observations of this plane is that its 2nd hand.. theres english, chinese, and some european language on the signs. lol. and i tip a seat over by accident and realise that all the seats can actually incline forward 10 degrees. gasp. as if the stuff in the seats were taken out.
the take off was just as spectacular. just a minute after take off we encountered turbulence larh. how cool. we ascended like a roller coaster for quite a while until a stable height. stayed at that height for like.. 10 mins and then started descending again. the turbulence was causing the plane to shake lah!! we landed like.. bang!! lol.
at the airport we saw the system flashing that we cud collect our luggage at belt 5. but slightly later on some guy announced that it was belt 3 instead -.- so organised hor. we got our stuff and found out the bus cudnt fit our luggage and set off for the hotel without it first. then at about 1030, the kunming pple arrived back from dinner and our luggage arrived too!! happy to see fattz, ame, justin they all. haha im sure their experience had been just as good as ours. justin bought a box of jay chou cds.. all 6 albums.. for wad.. 98 yuan?!? lolol. ownage. and its off to bed after some dilly dally.
Day 7 Friday 29 april
give us a break man. last day also want us to wake up early. anyways, woke up arnd 730, packed our stuff for the umpteenth time and hauled our heavy luggage down to the hotel lobby and set off for Dounan flower market. the flowers there are really beautiful, but the market was really cold haha. i bought 3 satchets of potpourri.. scented pouches. some bought flowers and kenneth khing bough qi li xiang seeds!! haha.
that afternoon was mass shopping.. first we had fast food lunch @ kfc. their stuff is ultra healthy lah. my chicken burger had veg infused in the patty and my fries had hardly any salt. lol. we then taxied to this place called shuang long bai huo. the stuff they sold there was kinda terrible so we dint buy anything.. but decided to walk outside to the stalls to see fake stuff. the shirt i remember best was one with 3 stripes at the shoulders and 'nike' written across the front. lolol. shud have bought one. anyway we decided that the place sucked and cabbed back to our initial point. i tell u.. the way the taxis there work.. HAIYOH. our 2nd cab driver even stopped the cab halfway and started reading his book while waiting for the light lah. and u have to run to a cab to get it. like -.-
after shopping it was off to western buffet. too bad i was exhausted.. if not i cud have eaten more haha. and then it was to airport for the final flight, all high from the chocolate, caffine (and nicotine (!!!)) from the buffet. 
picture courtesy of brendan. took the final flight back to singapore and arrived arnd 230. but lol.. my parents werent there when i walked out!! waited a while and they arrived at 3+. went home and slept at 4.
PHEW. anyways, here are my final thoughts on the trip. i was quite looking forward to it cos of the pple going, as in half of last year's 4.15 noah, and it was worth it. grew a lot with the .15 guys and i must say, u all rock, with all the lame stuff and what not. but even so, i wud not deny that i actually wanted to go beijing. but my decision was right.. doesnt matter what place we go.. as long as u have good friends going with you thats all that matters.
one week with a group of pple wud really reveal how close the bonds of friendships are. i must say that some friendships were definitely put to the test, while others were strengthened. but at the end of all this, im really glad im back, cos i felt i was drifting away from God during this trip. i was really missing my churhc friends and im glad i cud spend some time with them over these 2 days. and the weather and exhaustion was killing me. haha when i came back, my appetite has increased like siao haha. and my nose is still red -.- thank God i didnt fall sick. yet. haha. yeap. and tts abt it i guess. leave u will the more important pictures. end of entry. :)
1 Comments:
great pics dude..
keep posting
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