Chinese New Year: Food in Shanghai, Hotel in Sydney
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008Chinese New Year (aka the Spring Festival) is approaching. According to Chinese lunar calendar, the last day of Year of Pig (2007) will be Feb. 06, 2008 which is the Chinese New Year Eve. I am going to cook the CNY eve dinner by myself for the first time this year. Here is the menu of my CNY dinner:
- Drinks: Sake
- Main Dishes: 1) Steam fish; 2)Shanghai style bouilli pork; 3）Chicken with mushroom; 4)Crab meat soft dofu, 5) Chinese cabbage with soup;
- Staple food: Steam rice;
- Drinks after dinner: Kungfu Tea;
- Disert: Sweet sticky rice dumpling stuffed with sesame paste, served at mid night according to tradition
This is definitely not a traditional CNY dinner menu, I am just going to cook what we love to eat (and forget about the tradition), and I am a meat-lover.
My things to do during Chinese New Year holiday?
I have wished that I can go to Cambodia in my 2008 place to go. But the airticket from Guangzhou to Sihn Reap during CNY is ridiculous high (5,000 RBM + tax for round trip). And the weather starts to getting very warm and raining season is coming. Then I check tickets and hotels in Australia and New Zealand because we want a warm holiday, I want to visit Sydney or Perth where one of my college friends is.
I started googling “sydney” as keyword and bumped into new things. (yes, everything there is supposed new to me. 🙂
Darling Harbour is one of the “buzz“ areas but in fact I found there are quite some family friendly things to do there: Sydney Aquarium, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM and even a Chinese Garden of Friendship. I really interested in this garden, especially after I know there will be an identical twin garden of Yu Garden of Shanghai in Europe . I don’t want to see another copy for freindship.
As AUD and NZD are appreciating a lot recently, the hotel price is one of my budget concern. I check these three hotels (note: all rates are for Feb. 18, 2008)
- Star City is a five star complex with a casino, restaurants and bars, entertainment venues, hotel apartments, and banquets; conference centres. The best deal i found it AUD 75/night for one bed room apartment.
- Ibis Darling Harbour Hotel was recently completed a full refurbishment in September 2007 (good news!). It has 256 hotel rooms together with iBistro restaurant. The best deal I can get is 1 Queen Bed room: AUD 239/night.
- The Four Points by Sheraton, Darling Harbour is Australia’s largest hotel. There are with 630 rooms including 45 suites, wow! It is located very closed to major entertainment and shopping districts including Pitt Street Mall, Queen Victoria Building, and Chinatown. The best deal is City Side Room: AUD 238/night.
It is pretty expensive, especially after I read what Brian from Kango has blogged about the “$400-$500/month” apartment in Bali. I don’t think i will go to Sydney this time.
生动物园）, an amusement park (Chime Long Paradise), a water park（水上乐园）, a circus (Chimelong International Circus，长隆国际马戏团), a golf course and a few hotels in the resort area. Its official website is well organized and easy to use for vacation planning.
large and you can easily get distracted by shows and programs. So plan ahead if you are with kids. I was very exciting about the safari but was a little disappointed after the tour. The animals are no longer WILD and it is not really a safari. You can even see Tiger and Lion live together in the same yard which is out of imagination in
an extremely exciting one. Highly recommended!!! The show starts at 7:30pm daily and we entered earlier to get front seats. But this is not necessary. We found it could be more fun if sitting at back. VIP seats in the center area are avaliable inside and 100 RMB extra. Basically, you can plan a light dinner between zoo and the circus show.
Grigo