GAMD: 16-17 June 2022
Sunday, 19 June 2022 14:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elusivekYes, the prompt was for 17-June, but it's somewhat special to me because, I was stuck in town for 2 years (since February 2020) and I just so happened to go on a very short trip... so I'm making my GAMD into 2 days. But I'll also only put key photo points here... coz I have too many photos LOL. I will have a link to the full album with descriptions (hopefully) at the end of the post, for anyone interested.
For this trip, I went with some work colleagues and they know China well, they hired a 7-seater and drove us around in it, so we had relative freedom on where to go and how... as well as getting confounded by the GPS system, haha.
16 June 2022
First time traveling, and to China, after 2 years, and while still under the effects of the pandemic, was nerve-wracking. All that technological stuff of transferring your PCR test results to the Chinese platform and all that. Anyway, it was done. It took roughly 1.5 hours to drive from Hengqin 橫琴 to Shunde 順德.
Our first stop was lunch at a local restaurant, 豬肉婆 (The Pork Lady). It's a bit of an eye-opener for me because in Macau, one wouldn't think of spending so much on decorations. I later understood that it's not just the restaurant, but the entire complex (inclusive of the hotel, "outdoor mall" and amusement park (OCT Harbour Qushu Bay) that had this themed "old China" vibe. The mall/restaurant part was this pretty old China style and the amusement park was... amusement park crazy...
We had many more dishes, but to me the most weird one was this one, on the menu it says "fish mouth" and I thought it was really exactly the mouth or the lips of the fish, but in the end it's just the fish head, but deep fried. I've had steamed fish head before so in the end this dish wasn't anything special.
Funny story: after lunch, we asked how far away the hotel was, and the restaurant staff said "ah, less than 5 minutes away". So we all piled back into the car and drove off, started the GPS, followed it, went into a car park, and parked the car right at the sign of the hotel we were staying. It was a hugh underground car park, and it looked familiar. Still, we went up, and checked in. I had a little problem with my "track and trace code" for China, but the staff fixed that for me. The room was decent enough, classy and chic, except for the 3 cushions on the sofa. LOL.
Continuation of the funny story... so after we checked into the hotel and rested up, we decided to go out and have a dander around. After walking less than 20 steps from the hotel, we see... the restaurant we just had lunch at....
Apparently, because we parked in the underground car park, we didn't know that the restaurant and the hotel were practically just next to each other, and we went in and left from different car park entrances, but it was essentially the one and the same car park. Now we understood that the staff meant "less than 5 minutes across on foot". We started a short roam around the shopping street area. It's basically a "copy" of old China style streets, so good photo ops everywhere.
Shunde is known for its food, specifically cow products, so milk, milk and milk. We started off our snacking with 雙皮奶 "double skin milk". It's a milk pudding style dessert that's been steamed or boiled that it has 2 layers of "skin" (fat, I suppose) on the surface.
Then at another store we had two types of 炸鮮奶 "fried milk". One had a different type of coating and the other was with egg. The fried milk actually has some kind of thickener in the milk so it's slightly solid and they are able to fry it. All the desserts were yummy, if a tad too sweet.
We actually didn't do a lot of sightseeing in this trip... it was more.... food food food food food... but it's okay haha! We basically just stayed chatting until it was time to drive out for dinner. Our lead drove us over to 番禺 Panyu (a district in Guangzhou) that was half an hour away, and we had dinner there. The special dish was this... raw fish thing. The fish is served sliced and raw, you pick up the amount of fish you want, and then you mix with oil, soy sauce, other condiments (parsley/coriander/lemongrass/whatever else) and mix it all up. So it's a kind of a 撈起... hey look I found the wiki for anyone interested to read more about it!
For this meal, I wanted to show the yummiest dish (for me)... it was this deep fried spare ribs. DELICIOUS!
After dinner, we got driven back to our hotel, and it wasn't too late, so we went for a walk around the amusement park. Although there were some obviously "pirated" things (like a fake "Cony" from Line Friends, some bootleg Pikachu and whatnot), at least the lighting and the atmosphere made it a fun walk around. By 11pm, the 2 kids were tired so we just returned to the hotel. I didn't have anything to do and I was in a room on my own, so I just showered and went to bed.
17 June 2022
Although I slept very well, no dogs waking me up in the middle of the night, I still just opened my eyes at around 6:30am. Did some leisurely yoga, washed my hair, went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, then went out. I spied a Starbucks from my window, so I went to look at their mugs and tumblers. Starbucks China merchandise is usually a lot nicer than those of Starbucks Hong Kong and Macau. AND I WAS RIGHT! They had an Alice in Wonderland collection.... so nice! I didn't buy any though.
Apparently, everyone decided to sleep in except me, so I walked around the same outdoor shopping mall again. It got too hot though, so after hiding in the shade a bit and when the indoor mall opened, I went in to see. Indoor decoration also very nice.
There were a lot of indoor water features. While I walked around, the guys were looking at electric cars. I continued to walk around the mall.
Soon after, it was time to check out from the hotel and head off for lunch! This time we went to another restaurant, but the indoor decoration was similarly impressive. From all our lunch items, I've decided to show the milk egg tart. It's different from the Portuguese Nata, and it's a different kind of yummy. I guess I simply just love food, LOL.
The original plan was to visit the "Snoopy-Land", but then my colleague heard from friends that it's really in disrepair, but since we couldn't think of what to do, we decided to march on ahead and at least see the entrance. So we did that. And indeed... it's pretty much rundown. I asked if this is a licensed "Snoopy-Land" or is this a "China bootleg Snoopy-Land" and... it's a real licensed one. So I don't get it why they let it get so rundown. Just look at the huge Snoopy... he needs a wash! The street sign, though, looked pretty new.
So we decided to hunt out a reputable coffee chain (here we went to Pacific Coffee) and sat for a while. I caught up with my colleague on some work-related gossip.
The group was still undecided on what to do next. One of the original idea was to go hiking... but it was just too hot for that. In the end, the lead drove us to a slightly far-off but well-known milk product place 周大良牛乳 Mother Zhao's Milk Product.
We had more of that double skin milk, and some more deep fried milk variations.
I was also very happy to finally be able to find this Chinese cheese. I had once watched a video on Goldthread (and I found it so here it is) and I was always curious about this. I wasn't actively looking for it, but I still found it in this far-out middle-of-nowhere-place. So I got some to try. Super salty. They say you can use it to eat with rice, cook as seasoning or steam fish. I use it with bread and it's just as good. This was a surprising but happy find!
Next, we went to a shopping street of sorts. I asked if there is any reason why the buildings are in such a western (colonial?) style... I know Guangzhou had British settlement for a time, Qingdao had German influence and infrastructure, but I didn't know Shunde had any sort of historical thing with the west. Nobody could give me a straight answer, so... I have no idea.
Our lead tried to take us for one final dinner but it was full and we were like 10 people by now, so had to wait. We decided not to wait and just make our way and drive back home. So, it was another 1.5hr drive back to Hengqin, and then the whole dance with the immigration and health code checking and I got back home.
This was a short fun trip... although we did almost no sightseeing LOL. It's lucky I went on this trip because just today (19-June) Macau is back on lockdown again, so no in, no out. I'm stuck in Macau again.
As promised, the full set (with all the food items) of photos are in this Flickr album. As of writing this, I haven't completed writing the captions yet, but I will get to it once I've hit the submit button here.
For this trip, I went with some work colleagues and they know China well, they hired a 7-seater and drove us around in it, so we had relative freedom on where to go and how... as well as getting confounded by the GPS system, haha.
16 June 2022
First time traveling, and to China, after 2 years, and while still under the effects of the pandemic, was nerve-wracking. All that technological stuff of transferring your PCR test results to the Chinese platform and all that. Anyway, it was done. It took roughly 1.5 hours to drive from Hengqin 橫琴 to Shunde 順德.
Our first stop was lunch at a local restaurant, 豬肉婆 (The Pork Lady). It's a bit of an eye-opener for me because in Macau, one wouldn't think of spending so much on decorations. I later understood that it's not just the restaurant, but the entire complex (inclusive of the hotel, "outdoor mall" and amusement park (OCT Harbour Qushu Bay) that had this themed "old China" vibe. The mall/restaurant part was this pretty old China style and the amusement park was... amusement park crazy...
We had many more dishes, but to me the most weird one was this one, on the menu it says "fish mouth" and I thought it was really exactly the mouth or the lips of the fish, but in the end it's just the fish head, but deep fried. I've had steamed fish head before so in the end this dish wasn't anything special.
Funny story: after lunch, we asked how far away the hotel was, and the restaurant staff said "ah, less than 5 minutes away". So we all piled back into the car and drove off, started the GPS, followed it, went into a car park, and parked the car right at the sign of the hotel we were staying. It was a hugh underground car park, and it looked familiar. Still, we went up, and checked in. I had a little problem with my "track and trace code" for China, but the staff fixed that for me. The room was decent enough, classy and chic, except for the 3 cushions on the sofa. LOL.
Continuation of the funny story... so after we checked into the hotel and rested up, we decided to go out and have a dander around. After walking less than 20 steps from the hotel, we see... the restaurant we just had lunch at....
Apparently, because we parked in the underground car park, we didn't know that the restaurant and the hotel were practically just next to each other, and we went in and left from different car park entrances, but it was essentially the one and the same car park. Now we understood that the staff meant "less than 5 minutes across on foot". We started a short roam around the shopping street area. It's basically a "copy" of old China style streets, so good photo ops everywhere.
Shunde is known for its food, specifically cow products, so milk, milk and milk. We started off our snacking with 雙皮奶 "double skin milk". It's a milk pudding style dessert that's been steamed or boiled that it has 2 layers of "skin" (fat, I suppose) on the surface.
Then at another store we had two types of 炸鮮奶 "fried milk". One had a different type of coating and the other was with egg. The fried milk actually has some kind of thickener in the milk so it's slightly solid and they are able to fry it. All the desserts were yummy, if a tad too sweet.
We actually didn't do a lot of sightseeing in this trip... it was more.... food food food food food... but it's okay haha! We basically just stayed chatting until it was time to drive out for dinner. Our lead drove us over to 番禺 Panyu (a district in Guangzhou) that was half an hour away, and we had dinner there. The special dish was this... raw fish thing. The fish is served sliced and raw, you pick up the amount of fish you want, and then you mix with oil, soy sauce, other condiments (parsley/coriander/lemongrass/whatever else) and mix it all up. So it's a kind of a 撈起... hey look I found the wiki for anyone interested to read more about it!
For this meal, I wanted to show the yummiest dish (for me)... it was this deep fried spare ribs. DELICIOUS!
After dinner, we got driven back to our hotel, and it wasn't too late, so we went for a walk around the amusement park. Although there were some obviously "pirated" things (like a fake "Cony" from Line Friends, some bootleg Pikachu and whatnot), at least the lighting and the atmosphere made it a fun walk around. By 11pm, the 2 kids were tired so we just returned to the hotel. I didn't have anything to do and I was in a room on my own, so I just showered and went to bed.
17 June 2022
Although I slept very well, no dogs waking me up in the middle of the night, I still just opened my eyes at around 6:30am. Did some leisurely yoga, washed my hair, went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, then went out. I spied a Starbucks from my window, so I went to look at their mugs and tumblers. Starbucks China merchandise is usually a lot nicer than those of Starbucks Hong Kong and Macau. AND I WAS RIGHT! They had an Alice in Wonderland collection.... so nice! I didn't buy any though.
Apparently, everyone decided to sleep in except me, so I walked around the same outdoor shopping mall again. It got too hot though, so after hiding in the shade a bit and when the indoor mall opened, I went in to see. Indoor decoration also very nice.
There were a lot of indoor water features. While I walked around, the guys were looking at electric cars. I continued to walk around the mall.
Soon after, it was time to check out from the hotel and head off for lunch! This time we went to another restaurant, but the indoor decoration was similarly impressive. From all our lunch items, I've decided to show the milk egg tart. It's different from the Portuguese Nata, and it's a different kind of yummy. I guess I simply just love food, LOL.
The original plan was to visit the "Snoopy-Land", but then my colleague heard from friends that it's really in disrepair, but since we couldn't think of what to do, we decided to march on ahead and at least see the entrance. So we did that. And indeed... it's pretty much rundown. I asked if this is a licensed "Snoopy-Land" or is this a "China bootleg Snoopy-Land" and... it's a real licensed one. So I don't get it why they let it get so rundown. Just look at the huge Snoopy... he needs a wash! The street sign, though, looked pretty new.
So we decided to hunt out a reputable coffee chain (here we went to Pacific Coffee) and sat for a while. I caught up with my colleague on some work-related gossip.
The group was still undecided on what to do next. One of the original idea was to go hiking... but it was just too hot for that. In the end, the lead drove us to a slightly far-off but well-known milk product place 周大良牛乳 Mother Zhao's Milk Product.
We had more of that double skin milk, and some more deep fried milk variations.
I was also very happy to finally be able to find this Chinese cheese. I had once watched a video on Goldthread (and I found it so here it is) and I was always curious about this. I wasn't actively looking for it, but I still found it in this far-out middle-of-nowhere-place. So I got some to try. Super salty. They say you can use it to eat with rice, cook as seasoning or steam fish. I use it with bread and it's just as good. This was a surprising but happy find!
Next, we went to a shopping street of sorts. I asked if there is any reason why the buildings are in such a western (colonial?) style... I know Guangzhou had British settlement for a time, Qingdao had German influence and infrastructure, but I didn't know Shunde had any sort of historical thing with the west. Nobody could give me a straight answer, so... I have no idea.
Our lead tried to take us for one final dinner but it was full and we were like 10 people by now, so had to wait. We decided not to wait and just make our way and drive back home. So, it was another 1.5hr drive back to Hengqin, and then the whole dance with the immigration and health code checking and I got back home.
As promised, the full set (with all the food items) of photos are in this Flickr album. As of writing this, I haven't completed writing the captions yet, but I will get to it once I've hit the submit button here.
