Date: 3 April 2010
Venue: Xiamen, Fujian, China
We left Yong Ding early in the morning. We took the morning bus to Nanjing (南靖) then changed another bus to Xiamen. It didn’t take all that long, may be 2 or 3 hours the whole journey. Very cheap :)
After settling down in the hotel, we wandered around the neighbour which was actually the Buxing Jie, we ate so many snacks and really enjoyed ourselves. My first impression of Xiamen: it was very nice and clean, quite like Guangzhou actually, so many people and many of them are very modern looking - ‘modern’ probably isn’t the word, but well, I surely saw some quite fashionable young people. It was all very delightful.
Unlike in Hong Kong, taxies are very cheap in mainland China - we took a taxi and headed straight to the Nanputuo Temple.
After we paid a very small admission fee (RMB3), we went in the famous temple. To our delight, we followed a Hong Kong tour which was (I believe) organized by some Hong Kong secondary school. The tour guide told us everything we needed to know, but some students eyed at us, haha, when I asked the guide a question regarding the history of Buddha - I simply couldn’t help it, you should know how curious I am about things and how I always ask questions!
It was more like a big park than a temple. Inside was packed with tourists who spoke Mandarin. In the end we found out the reason why there were so many of them - it was the birthday of Guanyin (our Goddess of Mercy). She protects me whenever I go, you see!
This was what I learned during our quick stay:
Come what may… is the best translation in my opinion.
We took a stroll to the famous Xiamen Daxue (university), it was only 5 minutes away. Didn’t go in though - the stalls on the streets caught all our attention. Cheap goods! Cheap magazines and shoes! At least that was what I bought: a pair of shoes and a travel magazine. It was all very nice, we were very cheerful. That was when we decided to spend money on some good food. The taxi driver took us to a dapaidong (大排檔), we had some really good (and cheap of course) seafood and drank beers! We talked about Xinjiang people and their weird traditions and laughed our hearts out! A waiter asked if we were overseas Chinese, haha, I said we just came back from Indonesia :p
A foot massage was the best after-meal activity! HAHAHA! It was so so so cheap in China! I love it! The sifu for Yan loved her too much that he kept massaging her feet with his best of skills, Yan screamed silently in her heart and was cursing/killing him in her head! Haha, poor Yan! Everyone seemed to be interested in us Cantonese.
We went back to the hotel very contented though we were already very tired. Yan and I spent so much time in a bookstore - haha, how extraordinary, our hotel was inside of a bookstore, can you believe it?!! I bought a very nice bag with a Germany map on it and called it a day.
In retrospect, I think there are so much to see in Xiamen, it was huge, new and somewhat exciting. May be I was in a really good mood then. It’s worth going second time. I will be back!
