zhong shan

on national day, i left my lovely bed in dark at 4:30 and took my breakfast. then left my home and got a taxi to go to china hong kong city. found tour leader and other mates there around 6 o'clock. we had 19 people in this tour with 10 "wests", 2 pairs of couples, a family, and a middle-age man (not including the leader). our ship was going to zhong shan after an hour.

after and hour and a half, we stepped on the soil of zhong shan port. after the immigration procedure, we got on a coach with a local tour guide. the first stop was a modified village providing activities and food (世外桃園龍井坊). some rode the horses for few minutes (very short one) and others shot arrows (nearly got the prize of a free pigeon). later on we paid and ate young pigeons and fish balls just around 10 am.



the next check point was a bee farm (翠怡峰). but monkey kawks, cocks, and dogs were found. the presenter told all the things about bee products and began the selling of the products. But we thought this guy were the best among the sales persons in this trip.



the next few hours we stayed in the club hosue of agile garden. they took lunch of aloe. but it sucks. the restaurant was not bright, food was with a lot of msg. and we watched some basic magic shows and they wanna us to pay to learn that magic. no one paid finally. the place was called harry porter magic world but wtf it's not related. it's another pirated stuff in mainland china and few paid 20 yens to have a boat cruise but they said the river is dirty. while the others had massage. those workers only have 3 dayoffs and are as old as us. we are luckier than them. their skills are quite good and just 90 yens for 120 min.

next stop was "hawaii spa treatment world". but it's just a covered integrated swimming pool. it consists of children's pools, 50m pool, spa pool, sea salt pool, steam bath rooms, hot/cold man-made springs. it's not bad in mainland level at least it looked clean. we swam about two hours there before heading to the hotel at jiang men.

the room there is luxurious with steam bath, integrated switch (something like what i saw in clipsal interview), and lots of space to put sofas. but we wests first took our dinner (not organized by the travel agency) at the hotel food mall. it contains various kinds of chinese food. some were good while some were a bit under our expectation. after the dinner we walked the department store and some back to the room to watch their favorite soccer match. others played pool. slept around 1.30.

next morning the service of the hotel was disappointed. we woke up by morning call at 6.45 and should take the breakfast at 7.15. first damn thing was the place to eat changed without prior notice. and what pissed us was the food was not served until 7.35 by the push of local guide. when on the coach, the guide told how bad the city is and also the hotel is...

in just few minutes we visited a buddhist temple nearby but with no monks or nuns there. i think all were kicked out in cultural revolution 30 years ago.

then we went back to zhong shan to visit a place about orchid owned by guangdong academy of agricultural sciences. first is talked about some thing related to orchid (just a corner only). then they said a chinese medicine is made from orchid and began to sell that medicine. (another place to sell stuff)

we ran too fast so we had plenty of time to have our own activites. that is kart at zhong shan silverstone. it's cool for just using 50 yens to play 15min there. my kart is a bit bull shit because the kart could not get full power and lost power for a moment when being hit by the other car. we were all in sweat as we raced under the full power of sunshine.

aloe garden (西子園) owned by ausnow was another view point in our tour. the presenter (quite gay i think) showed different species of aloe and present products made of aloe (cosmetics, tooth paste...) and as usual asked us to purchase those products.

last lunch in zhong shan was much better when we took that in a restaurant when had specialized meals for tours.

we headed to a tribe from sw china (雲南布衣族). if you don't want to be in trouble, men please don't touch any girl's hat or they think you are in love with her. that society is headed by women and men are for indoors only. at there they briefed some tribe backgrounds and they again sold tea leaves and some sneaks to us.

a big gap because of our effiency sent us to waste time in the zhongshan sun wen memorial park.

and last spot was the chinese biscuit / dry meat store.

at the pier, officers asked us to take another ship but we didn't. (heard later a ship hit at hk pier). and we took the original ship back to hk.

P.S. more pix on my flickr album. (link 1, link 2)