Phi Phi Island Visit #1

Simon, Devrim and I caught the ferry to Phi Phi on which we all got ridiculously sunburnt. The island was filled with young people who were there to play in the sun and party. The three of us joined in and went for Thai massages, watched Muay Thai boxing by locals and idiotic foreign men who wanted to show off their 'fighting skills' but mostly just already had too much to drink. We also caught a fire show while drinking Thai whisky and Red Bull buckets and danced the night away.

Thailand, the beginning

After experiencing one winter in Melbourne, followed by a frikking bitter winter in Beijing, I was craving some sunshine and sand as a proper Australian does! A trip to Southern Thailand was to be my quick fix.

Phuket visit #1
Question: What do you get when you put 2 unexperienced drivers on motorbikes?
Answer: Human injuries, damage to 2 parked cars, a motorbike and 12000 baht worth of repairs.



The trip started off in Phuket with Alfy, Devrim, Nick "Smile", Simon and myself. The Jackson Street housemates - Alfy, Simon and myself - caught up on Kata Beach and met with the others for motorbike rides, Thai dinner and visits to a couple of reggae bars.

Alfy and Nick left the next morning due to work commitments but we kept them in our minds each time we "smile".

Chinese New Year in Malaysia

Our trip to Malaysia for Chinese New Year basically consisted of eating, gambling, playing with fireworks and a lot more eating.
Simon and I spent most of our time in Klang at the 'mamak' stall- a roadside store that serves indian food all hours of the day. One night we must have seen about 5 rats running around the place but no worries cos the food was good and cheap.

On Chinese New Year Eve each year my dad's family has a reunion dinner in accordance to tradition. We always have a steam boat dinner followed by the distribution and collection of red packets and more fun and games with fireworks. All the kids (my siblings and cousins) came out to play cos we had a bit of everything - small things for the young ones and bazookas & rockets for the bigger kids. Simon was the chosen one to light 'the 19 rocket box'. My sister Natalie assisted in the progression of my 7 year old cousin Andrew on from sparklers to dragon eggs which he had to light and throw. Unfortunately he wasn't very coordinated when it came to throwing after he lit the fireworks so there was a lot of screaming and running going on.


I even managed to catch up with my old high school friends from MGS for a few rounds of mahjong. It was great to see my partners in crime Seow Sean, Li Wen and her sister Siew Wen again. Not much has changed over the years! Mum was an angel and made our favourite recess snack 'keropok leko' to eat over mahjong.
Next stop - Thailand....on on!!

on leaving china

Living in China was a great experience. Observing and trying to live the expat lifestyle (on an intern wage) was awesome, it will definately be a while til I am able to live it up like that again.
Although I made an effort to be a good tourist, I don't think I would have ever done enough travel within China and seen all the places and things I would love to have seen and experienced. I am extremely pleased though with what I did manage to see. Learning a little bit more about Chinese people and my heritage was interesting. I guess I learnt to be 'more Chinese'!

Leaving China was easy yet it was hard. It is hard to put into words my entire experience there so I won't really try. As much as I was keen to move on from Beijing, I knew I would miss everything about it.

Thank you to everyone who made my experience in China what it is. I won't name names but the most important people know who they are.

Peace out China.

My last week in China - Shanghai AIESEC Conference

Despite getting to the train station an hour earlier then the rest of the MC, I managed to miss the train from Beijing to Shanghai. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Alice also missed the train and with the help of all of the AIESEC UIBE members, we negotiated our way on to the next train to Shanghai free of charge.
I fell into the role of conference bitch, so as the organiser I got to boss around the MC, Conference Chair and OC around. Nice.
My last week in China was entirely spent in Shanghai, and the best parts of the week would have to be:
1. the frikking awesome AIESEC official dinner, how smoothly the night ran and the large number of alumni that attended the dinner and stayed for after dinner drinks
2. drinking copious amounts of alcohol after MC elections with the candidates followed by drinking more with the trainees, and then drinking more with Devrim, PeiSan, Ben and Echo at Mint, and keeping Devrim out til an hour before his flight to Harbin
3. PeiSan's farewell hotpot followed by more drinks with Big D (all events with Devrim seem to revolve around drinking...)

The conference and time in Shanghai was great in that I got to spend more time with the MC, Echo, Vincent, Devrim, PeiSan, Ben, Triin and got to meet a bunch of new people who I was geniunely interested in including Yuan, Dexter and Alex. By the time it came for me to leave Shanghai the goodbyes became harder to say.

I like big butts

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When growing up, I visited the snow once. I was wearing borrowed snow clothes that were too big for me, got to ride a toboggan and managed to lose a too-big boot in the snow.
So when the opportunity arose go to to the Lianhuashan Ski Resort in Beijing with a bunch of friends, I was in. The trip was organised by That's Beijing and was attended by Sheila, Nick, Habib, Dom, Troy, Anne, Eduardo, Soraya, Aude, Rebecca, Simon, myself and 110 others.

I chose to learn to snowboard cos it looks cool and took a beginners class which I know I will have to repeat someday soon. I was the laughing stock of the day - not only cos I was shit at snowboarding but also because of my sexy rented snow gear which gave me a larger than average ass. "I like big butts and I cannot lie.."
My huge ass ended up on the That's Beijing website and has been rather famous as of late.

Nanjing

During the New Years Eve party, Marie tried to convince me to join herself, Mattias (Mahan) and Simon on a trip to Nanjing, excuse being she didn't want to be the only girl on the trip. I was very hesistent because PeiSan was in town visiting and I was in no position to make any decisions while welcoming the new year.
So on New Years Day the first thing I heard when I woke up was "Are you coming with us to Nanjing?" and I said yes. So I told PeiSan and got all ready to leave that night. Unfortunately Marie had a case of drinking way too much at the party and unfortunately she was in no state to be going on a trip. So on the train to Nanjing was Mahan, Svend, Simon and myself.

In China, December 1937, invading Japanese soldiers massacred an estimated 300,000 residents of Nanjing (then Nanking) and the capital of the Kuomintang which ruled the country then. The killing lasted six weeks, devastating Nanjing. We visited the memorial museum which is based in Jiangdongmen, one of the sites of the massacre. It was a solemn visit, besides the huge Chinese tour group which hurried through while we took our time there. Much of the Jiangdongmen memorial consists of open-air installations "The Graveyard Square" of stark stone sculptures and murals describing the massacre. A pathway carries the footprints of 60 survivors. Boulders detailing each episode line the paved pathways. The indoor exhibits featured blood-stained clothes, bones, skulls, even entire skeletons unearthed from under the site where the museum is located.

We visited all the tourist sites at Purple Hill. One of the places we went to was Sun Yat Sen's (known by the Chinese as the Father of Revolution) Mausoleum on the top of the Purple Hill, so called because of the purplish haze that the trees on it give off. I thought it was just pollution eh...
The funny thing was that majority of the tourists were locals and the novelty of the day was locals coming up to me and asking if they could take photos with the boys. Throughout the trip I was seen by the locals as the Chinese tour guide and translator.
It was a very long train ride home - a 17 hour train ride with about 50 stops between Nanjing and Beijing. Chinese flash cards and many games of 'asshole' just did not take up enough time!