31 Mar 2024 - Javier's 15th Birthday

Javier is now 15 years old and his height has almost caught up with me.  I think within a year, he will be the tallest in our family.  When we asked him if he had any place where he wanted to go celebrate his birthday, he said home.....  Anyway, we bought his favourite cheese cake from "Cake and the Fiddle" and had a mini celebration at home.

Happy Birthday, Javier!

30 Mar 2024 - New Laptop for Jerlene before Polytechnic Term Start

Jerlene's Polytechnic school term will be starting is about 2 weeks' time.  As she's taking Digital Media and Motion Design course, she will need a good laptop to do her schoolwork and projects.  I had sourced several laptops online in the past one week and eventually went for an Acer Nitro, which is the most cost effective for quite a good specification.  At the time when I made the purchase, there was a promo for a free upgrade to 32GB RAM.  And with all the vouchers that I had collected, I managed to get it with about $280 discount.

27 Mar 2024 - Appointment as Peer Support Leader

Javier went to school early today to receive the Certificate of Appointment as a Peer Support Leader for 2024.  This is the second year he is appointed this role.  I believe such leadership role will be beneficial to him in future.

24 Mar 2024 - Shanghai Day 6: Exploring IFC Mall before Flying Home

Before returning to the airport to catch our flight, we decided to explore IFC Mall since we still had sometimes.  We saw a hanging dragon in the mall, which reminded us of the green dragon that we saw in MBS last month.

It seems like all the Chinese New Year decoration had not been removed yet.

There were many interesting shops around but one of them had attracted our attention.

And it's the plushie catcher shop!  It's extremely cheap, for S$10, we got a basket of 100 tokens.  We were quite successful as we caught a total of 5 plushies!  It's great fun for just S$10.  Satisfied!

It's time to return to the airport and check in to our flight home.

Once again, we chose to have our meal after takeoff instead of before landing.

Back to Itin

24 Mar 2024 - Shanghai Day 6: Beautiful Night Views around Shanghai Financial District

As night approaches, the entire place started to light up and it's so beautiful.  Look at the below Oriental Pearl TV Tower beautifully lighted up.  Love its colours!

We then walked up a bridge that goes round a roundabout.  There are quite a few nice photo points to take great pictures of surrounding buildings.

Following is the Shanghai Tower, China's tallest building.

Other than those high-rise buildings, the trees and grass patches all around were also nicely lighted up.

Back to Itin        Next

24 Mar 2024 - Shanghai Day 6: Back to Shanghai City for Dinner

Since we now had quite a few hours to spare, we took the metro from the airport to Lujiazui Station (陆家嘴站).  This area is a business district with many high-rise buildings.  Of course, the key landmark here is none other than the Oriental Pearl TV Tower (东方明珠电视塔).

Since it's weekend, we decided to have an early dinner to beat the crowd.  We entered a rice noodle store and went to 2nd floor as 1st floor was full.

We sat by the windows and had quite a nice view of all the high-rise buildings, including the Shanghai Tower, which is the tallest building in China, and third tallest in the world.

The food here was great, especially the salt pepper chicken strips, which we ordered another plate after finishing the first one.

Apparently, this store claims that it sells around 5 million bowls of rice noodle every year.

After dinner, the sky had turned dark and it's time to capture the beautiful night view of the surrounding.  Stay tune for the next post.

Back to Itin        Next

24 Mar 2024 - RuiAn Day 6: Departing RuiAn (瑞安) and back to Shanghai (上海)

After we had our breakfast at the hotel, our cousins drove us to the RuiAn Railway Station where we would be taking high speed rail to Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station.  On the way, we crossed Feiyun River via  Feiyun Jiang 5 Bridge (飞云江五桥).

If you read all my earlier posts, you would have known that the train journey is about 3.5 hours.  Note that this high-speed rail travels at about 304km/h, which is similar to the speed of commercial Maglev.

After we alighted the high-speed rail at Shanghai HongQiao Station, we immediately rushed to take the metro to LongYang Station to catch the Maglev to Pudong Airport as we got a flight to catch.

We thought we would be in time but when we reached the departure hall, we realized the check-in counter had already closed.  We missed by 15 minutes.  So we had no choice but to take the next flight which was about 8 hours later.  As such, we deposited our luggage at the luggage storage counter before returning to Shanghai city for dinner since we now had 4-5 hours to spare till our flight departure.

Back to Itin        Next

23 Mar 2024 - RuiAn Day 5: Exploring Zhongyi Street (忠义街)

Yu Hai Lou (玉海楼) that was mentioned in the previous post is located along Zhongyi Street (忠义街).

Stepping out of Yu Hai Lou, we found ourselves amidst a street lined with local eateries serving up delectable Ruian cuisine.  There are also tea house and many other shops selling local crafts.

During weekends, this street will be bustling with activities.

After walking from one end of the street to the other, we returned to the car park and our cousins drove us to another restaurant for dinner.  It was more sumptuous than the lunch earlier, but I did not take any picture of the food.  However, we did take a group photo after dinner.  This will be our last meal with our cousins in RuiAn as we will departing for Shanghai tomorrow morning.

Back to Itin        Next