Xiamen Trip Day 2

Woo! As usual, everything is just so exciting in Xiamen! Our group is always the FIRST group to go down for breakfast :D I find that there's really cool that we're always the earliest for our buffets! :D

the early breakfast buffet girls

Honestly, the buffets were really major disappointments. All the breakfasts always had you tiao, the deep fried butterfly, toasts, sesame balls with red bean paste. These deep fried food really do not help our immune system. As a result, we were encouraged to take 2 vitamin C pills every single day. The dishes that were served to us were not as oily as I had expected, since everyone back in Singapore kept talking about the 2cm layer of oil in the food. However, it was still oilier than Singapore's cuisine and I wasn't accustomed to it hence I suffered from really bad stomach aches throughout the trip.

After our breakfast, some of us decided to do this company portrait photo shoot! HAHA! We had a lot of fun trying to look professional and serious.

we're attempting to look like some professional hotel managers

We checked out of the hotel and headed for the coach for our first company visit to Capital Mall!

Here's some photos while travelling...

Zhangzhou's KFC

(did you know they sell egg tarts with red bean? Awesomeness)

We're heading off to Capital Mall!

(check out my hair colour difference)

We went to Capital Mall at Zhangzhou, it was similar to Capital Land in Singapore. The staff at Capital Mall treated us to Zhangzhou's specialty, Peanut Mochi. OH. MY. WORD. This is, in fact, the most wonderful and beautiful mochi I have ever tasted, true to my heart! I loved how crunchy the peanut filling was.

Capital Mall @ Zhang Zhou

my favourite egg tart and peanut mochi!

the awesome crunchy peanut bits in the mochi

standing at the entrance of Capital Mall @ Zhangzhou

wal-mart AHH!!

I finally went into Wal-Mart in Capital Mall. I have been waiting and waiting to go to Wal-Mart for a seriously long time. Some may laugh at this but I really think Wal-Mart is extremely cool! With its wide variety of groceries and amazingly low prices, how could anyone not love Wal-Mart?

Limin and I at Wal-Mart

(we were prohibited from taking photos inside Wal-Mart)

During this trip, I have grown so much more in love with Strawberries! Strawberry Mochi, Strawberry Yogurt drink (which I accidentally squirted at Liling while attempting to open the drink), Strawberry Milk Tea and Strawberry Milk Candy! Gahh!! I think I really love strawberry flavoured products simply because its associated to the colour pink! Awesomeness.

Everyone has been cautious about the melamine in the dairy products.

As for me, I'm daring enough to give it a shot.

The strawberry yogurt drink did not disappoint (:

strawberry milk candy, mochi (i think this Ah Q brand is the best out of 4 mochi brands i've purcharsed from supermarkets) and strawberry milk tea

when you go China, you've got to got to buy their milk tea!

After our first company visit, we went on to our second, which was at Quanzhou Embrodiery Traditional Factory. And yes, we spent nearly 3 hours travelling to Quanzhou. I felt like a serious pig during this trip. A pig that was ready to be slaughtered or something. After feeding us dishes that is fried with oil and salt, we proceeded to sleep on the coach for hours before reaching our next destination.

Put it more plainly, we were eating and sleeping during the entire trip? I seriously can vouch that my ass has expanded due to this trip.

Anyways, enough ranting about my weight gain because you're in for a whole lot of shock!

I have to make this very very important stand! While we travelled to Quanzhou, we saw a whole truckload of PIGS that were riding off to slaughterland. I mean, can you see how sad these pigs look? Oh my goodness. That's my perfect reason why I decided to be a vegetarian. Ughh. One of the horrible BIT guys actually whacked the pig's head and shouted, "Off you go and be a pork!" I felt like slapping that guy in the face!

the truckload of piggggsss. CRUEL.

Be a vegetarian and save animals' lives! Okay, moving on to the company visit...

The second company visit was pretty cool because we got to see how the staff there manually embroidered the products and also the beautiful porcelain items that the company manufactured.

one of the staff delicately sewing

porcelain product

our complimentary puppet show

we were asked to autographed the company's book

We travelled back to the hotel and we stayed in a hotel that has a sitting area with a beautiful tea set, which was actually more like a white elephant since they couldn't be used? But I had fun taking photos with it. (:

the pretty tea set sitting in the hotel room

i'm playing in the bathroom! haha!

We had our first free and easy and finally getting our hands dirty to shop! However, I spent nearly half of my RMB in this shopping mall, which was really not worth it because the items sold were practically overpriced. OH wells, too bad for me.

After all the crazy shopping, we headed for some awesome pizza buffet, which was only 45 RMB! The pizzas were amazing. They were superbly crispy, however, the ice cream tasted like expired milk powder?

our dinner restaurant

Ha, insider joke. While Liling, Carina, Limin and I attempted to cross the road to go to KFC (which was opposite our hotel), we kept screaming and screaming! I guess we pissed the pedestrians off. One of the guys, which totally scared us, shouted at us. And another guy attempted to push us into one of the cabs? Like what in the world? Thankfully, nothing happened and after buying our food, we crossed the roads, screaming again like some crazy women!

I love this group of girls! We can choose to be crazy and neither of us would mind.

Gotta sleep now! Ciao!