30 sept! haha... we were leaving shanghai for xi’an in the afternoon... so my dad and I woke up earlier for a light breakfast near the hotel... we just had some 豆腐脑, which is like tau huey (soya beancurd), except that instead of adding sugar syrup which makes it sweet, the people here take it as some kinda tofu soup, where they add some tiny dried shrimp, seaweed and eat it in a hot soup... so it's a salty version of our tauhuey... haha... we also had 豆浆油条 (soya bean & youtiao) at that small chinese eatery, before going back to check out of the hotel... then we cabbed down to pudong airport, to catch our 1255pm domestic flight from shanghai to xi’an!
豆腐脑
豆浆油条
The flight from shanghai to xi’an takes around 2.5 hours, so we were scheduled to arrive in xi’an at around 3+pm... I’d made arrangements to meet shanshan’s friend,, cui yichen at the airport... yichen lives in xi’an, and he’d agreed to bring us around xi’an during this 3d2n trip!! He’s really been a great help, from planning our itinerary, to hiring a guide on our behalf, and even fetching us from the airport... omg... he rocks!! Yichen, remember to let us know if you’re coming down to sg, we’ll definitely be more than glad to bring you around to try all the local delicacies, especially the bak kut teh that you missed out on during your last trip! =P
So I’m glad i managed to correctly guess yichen’s identity when we first met at the airport... haha... we’d only roughly told each other what we’d be wearing, but we’d never seen pics of each other previously... hahaha...
Yichen drove us to check into a motel 168, which was really quite nice too... xi’an’s motel 168 is even cheaper than both shanghai & nanjing... think it only cost us 158rmb/night... =P after checking into the hotel, we took a 5-10mins walk to the nearby drum tower and bell tower... 2 very famous historical attractions in xi’an... the drums at the drum tower were used in the past as a form of weather report... different drums and different beating rhythms indicated different weather... haha... as for the bell tower, the bell was struck at sunrise and sunset to mark the time... =)
bell tower in the day... =)
bell tower at night... =)
nice cloudy sky... =)
walking to the bell tower... beautiful flowers... =)
sunset from the bell tower... =)
some of the drums in the exhibition hall inside drum tower...
stage with percussion instruments
here're all the drums for different weather and seasons! =P
pic with dad! =)
LARGEST drum in the world! (on the guiness book of world records!)
After taking lotza pics at the drum tower and bell tower, we went to the nearby 回民街 for dinner... 回民 (Hui people) is like an ethnic race of people originally from northern china who’re actually muslims... so along回民街 there were lotza restaurants, food stalls and small stalls selling souvenir items... since it was the golden week, where the whole of china gets to enjoy a week of public holiday, and xi’an being such a popular travel destination due to its rich history, there were many other tourists there, and they were mostly from other parts of china... so yah, it was really damn squeezy... it’s really not easy squeezing with the Chinese here... they can be really rough and ill-mannered, so you gotta be careful... oh, and not forgetting, it’s most important to keep an eye on your belongings, especially in crowded places... you never know when you might be targeted by pickpockets...
We first went to a very crowded shop selling lotza bbq items... ordered mutton satay, mutton leg, beef satay, bbq fish, some beef stomach thingy, olive fried rice and 西安凉粉... their satays are very different from those typical satays we eat in shanghai or Singapore... their satays are like thin metal sticks with very very little meat on each stick... so the staff goes around with huge bundles of sticks and if you call out to them, they’ll generously hand you a bundle of whatever they’re carrying and finally, when you finish your meal, they’ll count the no. of sticks at your table, and each stick costs 0.50rmb, which is about S$0.10 per stick, which isn’t that cheap actually...coz each stick really has VERY little meat, like it can be just 1 tiny thin piece of meat hanging by the edge, and even if you take 4 or 5 sticks of that, the amount of meat is still less than 1 normal S$0.50 satay we get in sg I believe... hahaha... but well, this is a tourist attraction in xi’an after all... so their stuff’s bound to be ex-er... >_<
西安凉粉 - the 凉粉 is translucent & has a texture like chee kuey, with various spices & seasoning added...
bbq mutton leg?
skewered beef stomach
西安贾三灌汤包子馆
After the bbq stuff, we went to this 西安贾三灌汤包子馆, which was supposedly very famous for their 灌汤包, as recommended by yichen. True enough, there was a queue outside the restaurant, so we had to wait quite a while before we got a table... well, the waiting time was good anyway... had to give our stomachs some time to digest the earlier bbq stuff...
At the 汤包馆, we ordered quite a few items... a 羊肉灌汤包 (mutton tangbao), 牛肉灌汤包 (beef tangbao), 八宝粥 (eight treasures porridge), 凉拌面筋 (cold noodle salad)... I think people who like mutton will love the羊肉汤包but I didn’t really really fancy it coz the taste of mutton was quite strong... I’m not a HUGE fan of beef either, so the牛肉汤包 was just not bad... although I personally prefer the usual pork filling in my 汤包, I must say that the restaurant does serve very nice 汤包 coz the skin of the 汤包 is thin, with a generous filling of very juicy meat along with nice & sweet ‘soup’ inside the 汤包...
羊肉灌汤包
八宝粥 (eight treasures porridge) & 凉拌面筋 (cold noodle salad)
After leaving the 汤包子馆, Yichen still went to get us some fried persimmon cakes! Haha... supposed to be one of the more popular local snacks... it’s basically like the sweet dried persimmon we eat during Chinese new year, fried with a thin layer of batter... quite nice but very oily... haha...
After all the delicious food, we took a nice & COLD stroll back to the hotel... =)
No comments:
Post a Comment