80% Holiday, 20 % Assignment

Just returned from a 5-day trip in China. As mentioned earlier .. was sent on assignment to cover a Mother's Day contest. Well, the contest was only on 1 day .. so actually I had 4 days to go around sightseeing and shopping.. Lol. Best of all , everything is paid for .. airfare, accomodations, food, taxi fares .. and still, I'm getting paid to write the article when i get back. So basically i'm getting paid to go on holiday ! =)

This post will be heavy on pics .. too lazy to write much. First of all, departing Malaysia .. watching the sunrise at 30,000 ft is a beautiful sight :

A typical shopping street in Shenzhen :

One of the nicer buildings :

The mall where the contest was held .. same owner with Gurney Plaza :

The inside is a bit nicer than Gurney i guess .. best thing of all, no tukau's aka idiots doing breakdancing in the mall :

Funny wordings on the immigration card .. apparently in China, we're all "Aliens" .. yeah we're monsters from outer space. That goes to show, translating mandarin into english word for word doesn't work :

This amused me the most - "Aliens shall not be employed in China without the permission of the competent authorities of the Chinese government"

So, do aliens require permission from the Space Agency or NASA to find work? And how can the Chinese government call themselves competent, when they call people aliens. This should make for a lot of LOL's when the Olympics come around. This is nice.. too bad our local McDonalds dont have it ..

From the Window on The World Park .. China is renowned for immitation stuff .. now they've immitated all the world's landmarks also ! Lol .. but anyway, it's quite a nice place actually.

This is supposed to be Japan : A replica of Sydney's waterfront .. this would be more convincing had there been no condominiums at the back:
Holland's flower gardens :

I went to Egypt too .. lol :
Scaled down Niagara Falls ..
Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC :
Mount Rushmore :

The Snow World was meant to recreate the Harbin Ice Festival ..

It looks nice actually .. Now i wanna see the real thing next year ..
Buckingham Palace and London Bridge :
The Arc D'Triomphe Gardens :
Fountains in front of the Arc :

Shenzhen's tallest building .. some banking company's office tower : This is supposed to be their newest mall .. MixC .. funny name .. but looks nice :
I just love the colors on this random shot :
Indoor orchid gardens at Changi airport ..

Sunset at 30,000 ft ... surreal

Not that i'm complaining, but the place wasn't as nice as I hoped. Being more of a nature lover, I would have preferred to go somewhere with more scenery .. instead of buildings and malls. But i'm quite thankful anyway for a free holiday, it was pretty good overall.

I guess i'm looking forward to next year, visiting China or Korea in winter .. looking for somewhere scenic with beautiful winter landscapes .. possibly Harbin or Jeju Island .. any suggestions?

Who knows, if i accumulate enough money, then i might probably upgrade my destination to Switzerland or Norway instead. That should inspire me to work harder !