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Pam Goes Travelling, Dublin (2026)

20/05/2026

Day 2: We started off the day with an hour long train ride to a local shopping mall for an experiencial imperial lunch. Of course we needed to dress up for it! I gave the make up and hairdo a miss because it’s my third time already. I don’t wanna pay extra for that.

It was the first time for the parents, aunt and Pat that they were tickled by it. Thanks to .loh for the idea and I made a good decision doing this particular one because we could play some games and earn taels pre-lunch/ show. The food was good and the performance was interactive! We had a great time.

Then next, we went to the largest electronics distribution centre in the world, Hua Qiang Bei Electronics Hub. I didn’t manage to venture past the 1st level because the first stop I went to was Insta360 and bought a GoUltra which I’ve been thinking of getting for quite a while. I spent most of my time inside the shop and somehow the place doesn’t quite seem to amuse others except my aunt who bought stuff for her grandchildren.

After the purchases we left for Dongmen Pedestrian Street for some shopping. After a 青团双皮奶dessert, I was ready to conquer the street! I went cray cray in WoW as I was looking for some skincare/ make up.

When we all met up again, we ate Jiangnan food that we thought was not bad but my mum wasn’t amused. Oh well…

It was getting late, so I herded everyone back, I went to the nearest Colourist shop for more make ups and skincare and took a stroll back. I was satisfied topping up what I needed on this trip!

19/05/2026

Day 1: It’s the annual family vacation! Woke up at 4am for an early morning flight to Hong Kong International Airport.

After arriving, we found a private vehicle that sent us to the border between HK & SZ. It was a bit like crossing the border between SG and MY.

Once we checked into our hotel, and I went to the parcel collection point to pick up all the things we bought online a week before we arrive.

After that, we walked into a random shop for our lunch then we took 2 separate Didi to the Nan Tou Ancient City because most of their Didi are 4-seater. 6-seater is not common.

Strolled the ancient city, browsed the shops and found a local bakery which some delicious bakes. I also had an osmanthus beer which took the man so long to fill. Nan Tou used to be the centre of the region’s political, military and administrative.

Then, we went to Talent Park that overlook the tech district. We explored a little and waited for the light show that was for 5 minutes. Nonetheless, I was secretly happy that it’s over because after the morning flight, we were all exhausted.

Ended the day with some Cantonese cuisine and we took a walk back and my 爷爷不泡茶 lychee 酒酿 was waiting for me at the lobby of our hotel. That night, we slept well!

08/05/2026

Day 10: Our final day in Shanghai! Parted ways with the girls in the morning. While they went shopping, I walked to the postal museum to get some stamps and postcards. Soon, stamps and postcards will be a thing in the past.

After that, I headed into the direction of Nanjing East Road to 沈大成 to buy some 青团 to bring back home.

Met up with the ladies and we went to 陶陶居, a Cantonese cuisine restaurant for our final meal. We also 美团 our last tea into the hotel. My last 淘宝 item also arrived just in time.

Then it was time to go. We boarded the plane and had a smooth ride home.

I had such an awesome time with & ! And now, China is one of my top 3 favourite countries! Yes, I said it. Of course it has its good and bad (and yes, I still love to loathe certain behaviours) but hey, it has a lot to offer. I cannot wait to be back again!

07/05/2026

Day 9: It was a day that I planned for shopping because we are in Shanghai after all!

First we checked out Wukang Mansion which everybody flocked there to take photos of. After some searching online, turns out that it was considered a luxury apartment built more than 100 years ago.

We strolled the nice aesthetic street of Wu Kang Road, checked out some boutique stores and the girls stumbled upon an amazing bakery called Come Come Bakery and they were through the roof with their excitement! 😁

We continued with the shopping at 陕西南路 and the girls went absolutely bananas at Musina Standard. They literally spent ours from daylight to sunset in that shop. I got bored quickly, at some point, I went out to venture on the street. I visited the SongMont, the bag brand that has been highly talked about on social media but cannot justify why I need a bag from there.

When the girls were done, we took the metro back to Nanjing East Road for more shopping and dinner before we called it a day.

Without a doubt, Mandy topped the chart again for being the highest spender of the day. 😛

It was a good day because we helped to boost China’s economy and we were satisfied at the end of the day. 😇

05/05/2026

Day 8: it’s Disneyland day! I was super psyched because this is the main reason why we (or maybe just me) chose to come to Shanghai!

I enjoy theme parks and the last time I entered one was ages ago, plus I’ve never been to a Disney one!

I was doing a lot of internal skipping inside and I even bought the hairband of ShellieMay because she was the only character I wanted.

It was funny to hear the Disney songs in Mandarin.

As it has been a long time since I sat on rides, we started off with the mild ones, very mild ones to get into momentum. I mean, the queues were shorter too! After lunch was over, then came the exciting stuff.

Tron, was of course the most thrilling rollercoaster. I was terrified while queuing but seeing a wiser man with white beard (looked like he is from a Muslim country) queuing, it made me felt better because if he can, I can too! Haha.

Anyhow it was super thrilling. I loved it. I was very pleased with myself that I still got it after all these years. Then I grew bolder that the less thrilling one really put me to sleep.

Zootopia was the latest ride and while I enjoyed the show, the ride was alright. The China Chinese are obsessed with Zootopia.

We ended the day of rides with Rex Racer, their version of Viking! It send my adrenaline through the roof, I was smiling ear to ear after we got off the ride.

We didn’t leave Disneyland without watching the fireworks so we did that and oh boy, what a magical way to end the day.

My top 3 rides were: Tron, Rex Racer and Roaring Rapids.

It also made me realised that maybe I’m not a big Disney fan after all because I rather be sitting on rides than watching those shows and do meet and greet. Hahaha. My childhood has died or maybe my childhood just wasn’t filled with enough Disney. 🤭

And if you think that the day was over, it wasn’t! Somehow we decided that our bodies were so broken that we had to go for a body massage. While we were having our massage, we also ordered in our very late dinner/ supper.

By the time we got back to our hotel, we were ready to hit the sack. It was a day where the energy was well spent.

03/05/2026

Day 7: It was a Sunday and I planned for an immersive experiential lunch at 叙宴 with the theme of 万邦来朝 (Nations - or rather region in this case, coming to pay tribute).

Got ourselves dressed up in hanfu to match the theme and was treated with a many courses meal that represented different region of China and performances. The highlight has got to be the one that 2 people twirling on a long rope. Ngl, comparing this to Gong Yan which I had in Beijing 2 years ago, that felt better and the food tasted better. That was the highlight of my trip back then so I had high expectation for this unfortunately it fell short, it wasn’t that this isn’t good but when you have comparison…

Anyhow it was a cloudy and gloomy day. Serena suggested checking out 蟠龙天地 (Pan Long Water Town) that underwent some heavy restoration and was opened in 2023 as some sort of “urban retreat” with restaurants and retail stores! Even though it was nicely manicured, seeing how the place has rejuvenated and the urban planning was incredible. It was a fun place to be walking down and browsing those shops.

Next up, we went to Yu Yuan old street. I always thought it was just a garden and that was the one I had in my mind. I didn’t realise it has an old street next to it. Even though we didn’t get into the gardens, we still had fun walking down the gorgeous and also extremely touristic old street with the Ming and Qing dynasty architecture style.

We decided to make our way to the bund. It felt unbelievable to be there! I mean, I saw this place 10001 times on tv shows, on the internet etc, but being there for the first time, it was phenomenal! I am also secretly relieved that all these feelings don’t seemed to get old because sometimes, when you travel (a little) too much, these effects can diminished. Despite the mist and the light drizzle, I was happy to be there.

Also, I realised all the lights at the bund switched off at 10pm. I didn’t get a good look at the skyline into the night but that’s alright. It was pretty misty anyway. It also means, I have to go and see it again the next time I go back!

30/04/2026

Day 6: The plan was to visit the unrealistically green lake that earned its nickname to be the Matcha Lake, that is known as QingShan Lake. Unlike the weather app in Singapore, the weather app in China is accurate to its core so we knew it was going to rain. Thus, we had to pull out a plan B, which is, to check out 天目里 (Tian Mu Li) to have a chill morning.

We had our breakfast in at Saanci cafe, it felt pretty chill since there isn’t too many people around.

After visiting To Summer perfume shop, we headed to the basement. This place is filled with so many little 地摊 that it felt like a happy place to be shopping! Bought a bottle of perfume and some ergonomic cups that was expensive by my standard but it was the little quiet luxury in life! Shopping can be both fun and toxic with friends. 🤭

Ngl, we can go on forever shopping in that space if it wasn’t for the fact that we had a train to catch!

Eventually we had to change the timing of our train to a later timing and arrived in the evening at Shanghai.

The cold weather was making me crave hotpot, so we went for a beef hotpot after we checked into our hotel. The beef was so fresh and delicious! It was yummy!

So yes, we arrived at the last destination of our trip in China which also means, we can stop changing hotels now! 😅

29/04/2026

Day 5: In the morning, we visited the Long Jing (Dragon Well) village. It was where the Long Jing green tea came from!

It was a terrace of tea field where the locals were picking tea. Fun fact, Long Jing tea is also considered the number one tea in the world. In the 18th century, Qian Long emperor visited the village, brought home tea leaves from the 18 tea bushes that still lived today, gave it to his mother and nurse her back to health.

We had lunch at one of the restaurant that Jay Chou and his wife visited a few weeks ago. People flocked there to take the Instagram perfect photo. The restaurant is also part of a hotel and we saw many ladies in their yoga uniforms, posing in front of their hotel’s window in all the yoga poses and the tea plantation as background, for that yoga-Instagram-perfect photo. I was amused. Lunch was good and of course we had to pair it with the Long Jing tea!

Before returning back to the city, we bought some Long Jing tea after doing some tasting.

Then it was to the West Lake, the must-go in Hangzhou to walk a bit. We were having milk tea withdrawal syndrome that we went hunting for 阿嬷手作. A little pastry tea break from Butterful & Creamorous was incredible too!

When the tummy was satisfied, we returned to the West Lake for some photos. Plenty of people were taking photos along the lake side with their hanful, hair and make up. It also made us have no shame to just find a spot, took forever to set up our tripod and make some memories.

After all the standard things we gonna do as a first time tourists in Hangzhou, we went for some shopping. We spent more than an hour browsing in Colorist and I also made use of the opportunity to refresh my basic and long expired make ups.

We ended the day with a massage that had food included. The dumplings and noodles were so good that we actually had 1 portion of those each!

26/04/2026

Day 4: Took a Didi to An Chang Ancient Town in the morning. That place is known for the traditional 江南 architecture, stone bridges, old waterways. There are also famous for their local handicrafts, winter cured meat and yellow wine.

I enjoyed walking down the street as we discovered some local eats, such as the curds, cured sausages, my yellow wine milk tea, soy sauce ice cream etc. It was such a fun street to be walking down. It didn’t feel that touristic perhaps because this is where you know the real locals are living in as well. As you can tell, we throw our dieting plan out of the window very quickly!

After the morning exploration, we got back to the hotel, picked up our luggage and back to the railway station and embarked on a 20 minutes journey from Shaoxing to Hangzhou

When we arrived in Hangzhou, we went out for the 羊肉串 at 很久以前. The service is top notch and our xdd server 给我们的情绪价值很饱满.

Then it started pouring a little. We headed over to the West Lake impressionist show at was directed by Zhang Yimou. The grandeur of the show wowed me. The dedications of the performers, especially under the rain in the water. There was also lightning, being the typical Singaporean with safety concern due to the lightning I feared the lives of the performers in the water but thankfully everything went on smoothly. What impressed me was also the neck fan lookalike device that I thought was a fan to cool me down, only to realise it was a device that emit fragrances that matches the performances. It was neat!

Thankfully we were also given ponchos that helped because once the show was over and when people dispersed, they collapsed the seating area like it wasn’t there at all at god’s speed. Hah.

Since it was rainy, we decided to go back to our hotel for an early night, physically we were back, but did we sleep early? Not at all. 🤭

23/04/2026

Day 3: Checked out of our awesome accommodation with our KFC breakfast as we made our way to the train station to catch the high speed rail to ShaoXing which was approximately 2 hours away.

I was looking forward to Shao Xing because it is not the typical tourist town. I was looking for authenticity and I found it in Shao Xing. Also, it was the place where ShaoXing wine (绍兴酒) originated from, I always find something I can relate to. 😏

Visited the Shao Xing wine museum, bought some drinkable Shao Xing wine back, didn’t find any for cooking but that’s ok. I also also conclude that the Chinese loves to drink! 🙃

For lunch, we ate hairy crabs, raw and cooked ones marinated with Shao Xing wine, their local delicacy of 绍三鲜 and 黄酒奶茶 (yellow wine milk tea) along 仓桥直街. They were all delicious.

We walked to 八字桥 and I found a quaint shop selling jewellery and pottery. I bought a cute little tea pot from the artist himself. That made a good souvenir for myself. He also recommended us a place for dinner and he was right, the food was homely and yummy.

Then, the girls stumbled upon a local bakery shop and went bananas over their bakes. Ngl, they were pretty good. We also went to another bakeries to buy more cakes and pastries.

I also got impressed by their public toilet there as it was clean and there was also a screen that gave all the relevant and irrelevant information about the toilet.

The last item we ate was the stinky tofu that Shao Xing is known for. It is fried, very similar to the ones I ate in Taiwan, except this doesn’t have pickled vegetables, just condiments that we add ourselves.

By the time we got back to the hotel, we were too full to move! That was when Serena raised her white flag declaring that she would go on a diet and we shall be responsible for the food we ordered. (No prize for guessing the dieting plan was quickly thrown out the window the next day. 😂). It was a good attempt though. 😅

We had such a great day in Shao Xing!

25/01/2026

Day 19 - It was time to bid farewell to Anne and Ireland. I left in the morning to make my way to the airport. Anne told me how efficient the international airport in Dublin is and I played with fire. I was racing against time and you know when you’re rushing, always expect something to go wrong.

First, I had to catch the luas (tram), and I took the one in the opposite direction of course! I started noticing when my GPS was going the other way instead. Then I had to alight at the next stop, crossed the road to try again. I was refreshing the real-time AirPort Express bus information like mad deciding where would be the best place to alight to make it for connecting bus to the airport. It doesn’t help that it was the morning peak hour. One thing for sure, I knew if I were to miss the plane, it was on me. My stress level was at 1000% , that unnecessary adrenaline rush. 😣

I made the calculated risk of alighting at Terminal 1 instead of Terminal 2 where my plane was departing from because I reckoned it would be faster to drop at Terminal 1 and take a 5 minutes walk instead of waiting for people to unload their luggage at Terminal 1 and then wait for the bus driver to drive it to Terminal 2. Indeed, the gamble paid off! I was at the check-in counter 15 minutes before the check in closed. What a close call! I cleared the immigration custom in just 20 minutes, not bad at all.

Perks of flying on my birthday is that I got a nice little postcard by the crew and I landed in Turkiye 4 hours later. Took a subway to my hotel, proceeded to a random restaurant for dinner.

I thought there was a rooftop bar at my hotel but turned out that the rooftop was closed off to public and there isn’t a bar. It was too late to go out for any drinks so I decided to do my homework for some exploration the next day and called it a night.

Surely as a birthday, it didn’t felt like one. It was a normal travelling day. Hey, I didn’t miss the flight from Ireland so I’ll take it as a good start to another year round the sun! 🍻

Oh, and thanks Turkey Airlines for the free accommodation! 😇

Pam Goes Travelling

20/05/2026

19/05/2026

08/05/2026

07/05/2026

05/05/2026

03/05/2026

30/04/2026

29/04/2026

26/04/2026

23/04/2026

25/01/2026

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