A visit to the Pandora World - Zhang Jia Jie

Paid a visit to China again this year with Matta fair deal. This time is to the Avatar!! A 8 days 7 nights tour shall consider my healthiest days spent this time around, you can expect averagely over thousands of steps to climb or to walk daily coupled with fun, sweats - dry sweats.The pros of following a travel agent for a tour are eat sumptuous, non budget-ed accommodations, needless to plan for itinerary, you just need to pay and follow. By right, we should not be gaining weight again but the result was not as expected. Couldn't figure out why, could it be sitting and being idle right after each lunch?

A few places to highlight for this trip - Red Stone Forest, Huang Long Cave, Grand Canyon (with the slides), the Ancient Village of Feng Huang and the trademark of Zhang Jia Jie (the Avatar Hallelujah Mountain)

Our route for the whole trip is from Penang - Guangzhou(Transit) - ChangSa - ChangDe - Feng Huang - Zhang Jia Jie - GuangZhou(Transit) - Penang.

Luckily the weather there was soothing, just the beginning of Autumn, we get cold breeze and slight drizzling, overall, it was cool to hang around there.

ChangSa - You may want to skip this province if you are on your own trip, nothing interesting unless you are into Mr. Mao, then you may want to have a look on how his house is like, where his room is and so on. Otherwise, this is a place to skip.

MaoZeDong's Hometown

ChangDe - I would say another place to skip too, we had no choice as we are on a group tour so we had to follow.

Willow Lake

Feng Huang - The real deal is here, the ancient village though some part of it were commercialized. It is retain the ancient feel of building and transport. Even the people there.
Compared to WuZhen, Feng Huang is much more packed with people.

Zhang Jia Jie - The ought to be place with numerous stone mountains, peaks, stairs, caves, stones, people....
Love the Grand Canyon whereby we get to enjoy the slides, flying fox, boat ride. It was pretty fun there.

Yuan Jia Jie

Natural Hanging Bridge

 Avatar Hallelujah Mountain

Grand Canyon

Heaven Gate TianMenShan -was foggy, could not see the gate

Glass plank - foggy too

Overall, Zhang Jia Jie is the place where you could see the most rock mountains and it is becoming more popular due to Avatar, you got to train your stamina before going there =P

Thailand - A place of Love

Day 1 (Fri) @ Bangkok - Stopped by at Erawan Shrine Four faced Buddha for prayers and blessings then proceed to Wat Arun (Entrance fee: 50 baht)for some photo shootings, it was pretty sunny day with clear blue skies that brought out the beautiful contrast of every pictures taken there. Reminder: wear long pants, else have to rent the shawls to cover the bottom. Smart way to avoid being burnt under the hot sun is to plan for shopping malls trip in the noon =P whereby we can shop and eat without sweat~ this brought us to Terminal 21, the concept of the mall is like travel to the West within the mall alone.  Lunch there were pretty much inexpensive, 14 of us include children had our own main course and it costed us nothing more than 1500 baht. It was tasty and hygienic too.

Besides that, each restrooms has their own unique theme and most importantly , it is clean and equipped with the bidet system. Marvelous. That about the mall. After that, we headed for Asiatique in the late noon, pretty much nothing there, had dinner and off we go. Hmm, pretty costly for not so tasteful servings.

Erawan Shrine Four faced Buddha

 Wat Arun

Wat Arun overlooking Chao Phraya River

 Terminal 21 - Golden Gate

 Terminal 21 - Huge Oscar

 Terminal 21 - San Francisco

 Asiatique - Lighthouse

 Asiatique - Ferris Wheel

 Asiatique

Asiatique - Lovelock

Day 2 (Sat) @ Bangkok ~ Hua Hin - Shopped at Pratunam market in the morning, you can get pretty good deals there for wholesale price. You can get 3 babytees for wholesale price of 60 baht each, normal price for one is 100 baht. We started to transit to HuaHin from Bangkok, the journey is about 3 hours by van. Stopped by for lunch operated by the locals. Nice atmosphere. Arrived at the guest house (Hua Hin Star hotel), it is a new so-called guest house without lift, since it is still new, we get to stay comfortably with new beds, new TV, and even with the new electronic jug (newly opened for us). It has balcony for us too.. Nice. Good and warm service given. Shopped and had dinner at the Chat Chai night market. Had dinner at one the of the seafood stall (Moo Seafood) just beside 7/11 store, long queue but worth the wait. Tasty with reasonable price. Chat Chai is adjoined to Chatsila night market, we never had the chance to visit it, shall keep that for our second visit to HuaHin.

 Hua Hin Star Hotel - a minute of walk to the beach

 Moo Seafood @ Night market 

Day 3 (Sun) @ Hua Hin - Went for the long waited Santorini Park (Entrance fee: 50 baht). Again, hot sun with clear blue skies, we had great pictures there. Spent almost 2-3 hours there taking pictures and lunch. Then proceed to Swiss Sheep Farm (Entrance fee: 120 baht include feeding the sheep with grass) at the opposite, nice and lovely place. Get creative and start snapping..It was about late noon, we went to Market Village to have our must have McD Samurai. After that, headed for Cicada Night market, an artistic place to visit whereby they are selling handcrafts, handmade stuffs and potraits..
It is lively.

 Santorini Park 

Swiss Sheep Farm

 Cicada Night Market

 

Day 4 (Mon) @ Hua Hin - Begins with Hua Hin Floating Market, no entrance fee before 10am! hohoho.. We reached there about 9 plus, some shops have just started to open for business, You can get cheap souvenirs there, They do have train ride but you have to pay for it (50 baht). Plenty of shoplots, as you walk towards the end, there is a counter for you to feed milk to a group of lamb, 3 bottles of milk probably is just 1 oz per feeding bottle for 50 baht, It's very pitiful to see them pushing each other for the milk, seems like they have been starving for long. Then we made a quick stop at Hua Hin Railway Station for some photo session. Last attraction of the trip - The Venezia (Entrance fee: 200 baht incl Mini Zoo and the Park). Everything Italy like, a romantic feel place and SHEEPSSS too..

 Hua Hin Floating Market

Hua Hin Railway Station

 The Venezia

Day 5 (Tue) @ Hua Hin - Transit back to Don Muang Airport in Bangkok, if you arrive early, you can shop around for Narayas and some last minute souvenirs like chocos. Overall it was a nice and relaxing trip, gonna be back for sure.

Don Muang Airport