A two-hour visit to Zhuhai

Today Me, Myself, and I had a second chance to visit Zhuhai of mainland China again after the first visit in May last year. Actually I didn’t have any specific purpose in Zhuhai, but what brought me there was only because I had to have my Macau visa extended at the border. Casually the Macau visa for UNU-IIST staffs and fellows has no expiry date, except for my case that my visa has one-year validity. So now it is time that I have to renew the visa and the only best option is to go out and get in again with the letter from the institute as when I first entered Macau.

A square in Zhuhai in front of the border checkpoint

It was already late in the afternoon (2.30pm) and I had my passport, Chinese visa, and visa letter ready before crossing the Border Gate checkpoint. I exited Macau quite fast and smoothly with my diplomatic ID card and queued to enter China side as everybody else. And here I came.. Zhuhai!

The border check point, China side

Zhuhai

The only two places in Zhuhai around the border gate that I know are the large underground shopping plaza located just at the exit of the checkpoint and another shopping mall about five-minute walk. I decided to go to the latter first.

The shopping mall

I am interested in only two things at this shopping mall: books and.. of course the dessert at Honeymoon Dessert, I’ve never forgotten that since my first visit. Here there is a huge underground bookstore, but most books are in Chinese. There is only one block which I could find the original English books. If you like reading novel/fiction, biography of well-known people, business, self-development, literature, and so on… you might find some of your favorite books here. I got a couple of books finally.

Bookshelf in the bookstore

Inside the bookstore, and books I bought (last)

Then I went up for dessert at the ground floor. I had to wait a bit since there were lots of people there. You I could just see crowd of people everywhere around the place inside the building. Well, I had also browsed around the mall but I found nothing to buy. I finally got the place for the dessert. I really like the dessert here, and it might be good to just cross the border to come here for the dessert another time

Dessert at Honeymoon Dessert

Sellers outside the mall

Underground Zhuhai Shopping Plaza

I left the mall around 5:00pm after spending almost 2 hours there. I walked pass thru the underground shopping plaza and cross the border back to Macau. Eventually, I got what I came here for – the new unlimited entry visa to Macau.

Good night!

Discovering Zhuhai, China

Weekends are always the perfect times to hang out or discover new things and places. On saturday May 21, I joint with some of my colleagues for a trip to Zhuhai (??), a city on the southern cost of Guangdong province of mainland China just across the border from Macau. This trip had been initiated about a month ago by Elsa who is the academic program officer at UNU-IIST. Finally we had five people for the trip.

It might sound abit strange when I told you that we have to apply for visa to go to China from Macau, as Macau is also a part of China. Well, this is the case of one country two systems. Macau and Hong Kong are the two special administration regions of China while possess respective unique policy different from mainland China except for foreign policy and national defend.

For a one-day visit it is easy to apply for group visa. A travel agent in Macau could arrange this and they will have a guide to facilitate at the check point. The cost of the group visa is 40 MOP (about USD5) per each. However those who are not be able for applying for this type of visa, could apply for a normal visa with the cost of 150 MOP.

Elsa, Zamira, Pratikshya, Dimitrios, and me agreed to meet at Queen’t Court at 9.15am for our departure. We took bus No.5 to the border check point and it took around only 5 minutes. It would be convenient to make some currency exchange to RMB/Yaun before hand as macau patacas (MOP) cannot be used in Zhuhai. After crossing the border we took the taxi to Yaun Ming Palace by showing the taxi driver the chinese word print on the paper. It took about less than 10mn to reach the place.

According to Wikipedia, the New Yuan Ming Palace (????) is one of the Zhuhai’s places of interest. The palace lies on the area of 1.39 square kilometer including a 20 acre lake. It represents a partial reconstruction of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing which was destroyed in 1860.

We arrived the palace at around 10 am just about the time that it was opening. In order to enter the place we need to buy the entrance ticket which cost 90 RMB per person. since it was Saturday, there were many visitors. The opening time started with the tranditional chinese performance. That was quite impressive.

After the first show, we toured around from one palace building to another. There were show at some specific places and at specific times. However, all the show were quite similar (as we felt) which were mostly performed by the same performers. I could hardly understand the meaning of the performance cos I could not cache a single chinese word . However, the performance would keep all the visitors the whole day long. We then went on the boat tour around the large lake. Each of us had to pay again 15 RMB. At the middle of lake, there is a small island named Peace for all China. The boat dropped us there for praying the buddha statue. Then we continued the boat tour back. The view from the middle of the lake were spectacular with the surrounding green park and mountain.

It was almost lunch time and first we took some rest and grabbed some snacks and water before going ahead. While we were chatting we noticed a woman near by used her computer to work. “How come they could spend their holiday with their laptop?”, exclaimed Elsa. Well, I strongly agree that work should not be brought on holiday. We headed to other place (the buildings with western and chinese mix architecture) before finding a restaurant for lunch.

We finally located the restaurant inside the park after asking a chinese lady. Here we come!.. a chinese restaurant with various types of chinese menu. Well, people here could not speak English but luckily that they have English language menu. We ordered several type of dishes. It took abit long to wait for the food despite not so many clients. However, the food was very nice and we did have a great lunch. We share 40 RMBs each for the food.

After lunch we continued visiting around. We walked pass by the water park and visited the Lost city park (a park with a maze paths walled with head-tall plants), and after that we were trying with the cable climb. Walking in the green park allows us a very fresh feeling. It is a good place for people to escape a day from the crowded and noisy city. We then arrived at the cable car station. The cable cars are to bring visitors up and down a mountain top to see the nice view of the whole palace park and the city of Zhuhai. The return ticket for the cable car is 60 RMB per each. We could see Macau tower from the top of the mountain. By then the rain started to drop. We needed to rush back down after spending a short time over there.

As the rain increased its downpour We then decided to find a place to shelter and have a drink. Zamira made a joke by saying that we were now playing in the natural water park . We got in a shelter along the sea food street and asked for some hot drink. Again the challenge was the language barrier. Elas made her effort to show body language to a girl for getting hot tea. And as the result the girl brought us some sorts of drink with ice . With the help of a chinese guy we could get the hot drink. While we were waiting for the drink I had a symptom of stomach spasms. Elsa told me a trick by pressuring the tip of the middle finger with the tip of the thumb of the right hand strongly. Well, I felt a bit better though :p.

The rain had stopped and we moved on to another place near by to see the performance. We then wandering around and the whole day at the park reached its end.

We left the palace at around 4.30pm and we spent some times visiting the shopping malls near the border. It was raining quite hard and we ended up having dessert at Honeymoon Dessert inside the mall before returning back to Macau. I started to like the dessert at Honeymoon Dessert and I wish they open one in Macau. Finally, we arrived the border at around 7.30pm. 20 RMB per each need to be paid if we delay beyond this time for group visa. We really had a nice saturday.

My Week in Vieng Chan (Vientiane), Lao PDR

This is my second time visiting Laos during the last couple of years and that was a very nice trip i could say. It is also another travelling experience in my life.

Patuxai monument, Vientiane’s “Arc de Triomphe”

Hard working often offers some rewards at the end.. and actually the trip to Lao this time was to conduct a training workshop for all GMSEENet members over the Knowledge Management Toolkit project. We had a very tough time preparing for this workshop and eventually it was quite successful and fruitful.

Workshop

From 24th to 25th July 2008, this one-and-a-half-day training workshop was held at the Lao-Japan Human Resource Cooperation Center which is located in the campus of National University of Laos (NUOL) in Vieng Chan. The purpose of the workshop is to provide the participants who are the members of GMSEENet (Greater Mekong Subregion Energy and Environment Network) the fundamental knowledge on how to use knowledge management tools for sharing the the information among partner’s universities in the region. Knowledge management tools are sets of opensource applications such as CMS, Webblog, Wiki, Digital Library..  which are useful for information and knowledge sharing. Participants are from different universities and institutions in Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.The trainers for this workshop are all from AIT, who have actively been working in the KMTK project and I am one of those.

Workshop

Departed from AIT by van at 9:30 pm on the 22nd, it took us around 10 hours over the 615km road to reach the Thai-Lao border. The border is in Nong Khai province, the north-east province in Thailand which is only about 24km from Vieng Chan.

A place in Nong Khai, Thailand

Our breakfast – Poridge (Jok in Thai)

It was about 6:30am the next day and we ate breakfast in Nong Khai before crossing the border to Lao. Nong Khai and Vieng Chan are separated by the Mekong river and connect each other by the Thai-Lao Friendship bridge.

Thai-Lao Border (Thai Side) – Imigration Check Out

Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge

Lao Side (Imigration Check In)

After checking out and checking in passport at both side we exchanged some money into Kip and continued our trip to Vieng Chan on other two vans. The vans were bringing us toward the hotel (Novotel) in Vieng Chan. It took about half hour from the border and we reached the hotel around 11:00 am.

 

The hotel that we stayed

Vieng Chan 

Once entering Lao, along the way, people lifestyle, scenery on both side of the road are quite similar to Cambodia and made me feel like visiting home again.

However my first impression in Lao, is the foods. There are alot of delicious foods to enjoy.

Nem Neoung Shop

Nem Neung (Far more difference from Nem Neung in AIT)

Lunch

Another delicious one

After checking in the hotel room, Khun Chort, a very nice Lao lady who facilitated for the workshop and who is also from AIT, had brought us to one food shop for lunch. It is called Nem Neung. The spcial menu in this shop is Nem Neung the most popular food in Lao.. and it was quite tasty..

To be continued..