Cheap fast food.....NOT!

It's funny how our fast food are so cheap that everyone of them have it's own 99 cent menu. However, if you want some fast food in china, you better be ready to pay some big bucks....

I happened to walked around exploring random places here in the city and came across a KFC. I was sooo excited that I actually wanted to try what KFC tastes like here. After 30 second....I was out on the street again.....the price was outrageous! The cheapest meal was 4 times of a regular order of noodle soups. Not that I was being cheap, but I just rather have a regular Chinese meal then spending 4 times more on fast food I can find every few blocks in the US. Overall....it's still darn cheap compare to KFC in US...so I guess it's still worth it after all.....

To my dear friend Ricardo....

My friend Ricardo is back!!!!!!!!!! He's been living it up where all the big ballers are at! Good old State of Orange! Florida! I miss him sooooo much and I wish I was back in Cali. so I could go visit him =( too bad I won't be back until late July or early Aug. So I guess all I can do is dedicate this post to him and give him a little shout out from the People's Republic of China.

Heres my shout out to Ricardo,

I miss you very very much and I'm so glad you're back. Sorry I couldn't be there with you, but I'm there with you in my heart and in spirit.

Love,
Howard

********************************************

This is one of those picture that will always carck me up when I see it caz they both looked so serious and it really reminds me of all the good times we had.

**Ricardo, Left; Aaron, Right.**

Bossy Boss....

I just found out today that some people here at the office is actually afraid of me....am I really that scary? I don't think I'm mean or bossy at all....but for some reason I'm being seen as an authority figure..... Don't get me wrong, if the situation calls for it then I will use my authority but I haven't so far......I guess I'm just really not comfortable knowing that people are afraid of me.....I believe bosses and employees can still have good relationship without fear being a part of it. It's not easy being a boss....but I'm still learning.....give me time!

Since everyone need a badge here....I get a special VIP Badge!

Pandas....

One of my main goal here in China is to see the world famous Pandas....I'm running out of time! I've been here for more than half of my stay here and still not had the chance to visit them! I WANT TO SEEE THEM SOOOOO BAD!!!



** I found this pic from the website....not a real one taken by me


The closest I've came to seeing a Panda was these pandas made out of flowers during some flower fest they were having. It's actually pretty cool so I decided to take a picture of it and share with yall.



My passion for pandas started when I saw this movie when I first came to the states in 1995. The name of the movie is called "The Amazing Panda Adventure". It's such a great movie, if you have not seen this movie......put it on your need to see list for your next movie rental.

Addictions are bad.....because the Bible tells me so...

This post is dedicated to Jessica. To answer her comment in my "Dedication Post" to my puppies, I finally found something that reminds me of her.



She is a Grey's Addictomy....

Trip # 1 Part 3

Ok....I finally got some time to finish bloggin my trip. This is going to be a long one....so here I go...

The Second day, we visited Mt. Emei National Park...it was tiring....we walked ALL DAY.....

We started out by taking the tour bus to a bus station where we had to get off to take the transit bus provided by the Mt. Emei National Park.

Then after about 15mins, we arrived to the Wannian Cable-Car Station where we took these cool looking cable cars!



The Cable Car sits six per cart and runs on a single metal cable. It recently reconstructed a few years ago after the last one broke down and killed a few peepz. I wasn't too worried since it was still fairly new....after all....it was a great experience!



The ride was smooth and the view was great. Although I'm always afraid of height, just by looking at the great view and the wild nature created by God...it relaxes me.



Here's a pic of the great view taken on the cable car!



It only took about 15 mins to go from the bottom of Mt. Emei to Wannian Temple, which is to about half way up the mountain. Wannian Temple used to be a royal temple and only the Emperor and his families are allowed. It's now a popular tourist attraction, and where people come to worship it's idols.

If you pay attention to the left side of the picture, you will see a open window where you actually have to pay to go in. Imagine if people have to pay to go to church? I think if that's the case....our church would be pretty rich. The right window sells incense that you will see in the next picture. People spend soooo much money on buying them and all they do is burn it.....I call it "Money Burning"....they might as well just burn their money to the idols....



Estimates of the number of Buddhists in China range widely, from 100 million to 607.4 million, or about 8 - 46.5% of the Chinese population. Funny huh? Here in China, you won't find a lot of religious believers due to the previous government regulations. However, you will still see a lot of people that came from all over China just to worship these idols. They don't necessary believe in the religion but they are doing it out of hope, to hope that just maybe if they worship these idols, it would grant them what they wished for. I guess you could say that this is a very superstitious culture....

Below is a pic that I've mentioned in the previous paragraph. Look at all these people with giant incense....

They burn it and at the same time pray to the idols, then they stick it down and leave it burning in a big pit like the one in the pic.



I find it weird that you can find both Buddhism and Taoism in the same temple, but many Chinese identify themselves as Taoist and Buddhist at the same time so I guess it's not so weird to them. Here is a pic of how Taoist worships their idols....



Inside the Taoist temple (BTW...I forgot the name), you will find a huge dumbo which the Taoists believe it to be the strongest animal.



For some reason, there is a superstitcious believe that if you rub the back feet of this dumbo....it will bring you good luck. Trust me when I say this....in this religion...there is a million superstitcious believe sayings of "If you do this or do that, it you bring you good luck/wealth/health/marriage/job/ and who knows what else." At the end....they don't even know what to believe any more....they do it just because...or "Maybe it will work".



One thing I find it really funny was that their temples are basically money machines for them. It's no different from a store that sells antiques, religious products, and souvenirs or a tourist attraction that you have to pay to go to. It's pretty sad that they use their own temple as a market place to make a living.

Here is a pic of a shop right outside of the temple.



Of course. Besides the temples, Buddhas, and dumbo....there is also other things that made Mt. Emei one of the most famous place in China.

Mt. Emei was classified as one of the top 4 mountain in China. It's constantly covered in a sea of clouds and it's trees/plants covers 92% of the mountain.

Here is a view at the mountain from the temple.




I also find the designs of these old buildings very interesting!



After visiting the temple, we headed out for more hiking to this area where you can visit another attraction Mt. Emei was famous for. The Monkeys! It's funny how they classified the Monkeys in 3 categories, the civilized, the gangsters, and the robbers.

The civilized monkeys will mind their own business and only take food when you hand it to them.



The gangster monkeys will hit you up by standing in the middle of the road to block you or hug onto your leg so you can't go unless you give them food.



The robber monkeys will just straight out jack you. One of them came up next to me and straight up stripped my water bottle out of my hand. Another guy in front of us barely bought some monkey food package and this one monkey was waiting for him on the roof top. He waited for the guy to come out, then hopped down and ripped the food right out of the guy's pocket.




For the safety and health of these wonderful creatures, this is the only permitted Monkey Food you are allow to feed the monkeys with. It's small package with some corn pops in it....well...they look like corn pops.......don't know what they taste like....



The hike took about 2 hours but the beautiful views was rewarding and made it enjoyable.



My friend Teresa took her shoes off and went into the water.....it was ICE COLD!



Theres a lot of funny signs along the way so I took some pics of it.

Wow....if trees and grass can bring joy and happiness ....why do they ask the idols for it? They should ask the Creator of these trees and grass for joy and happiness....



Not only did I not passed quickly....I stopped and took a pic of this sign....



Are you serious? JOKING MONKEY ZONE??? ROTFL!!!!



If you can't really read it....it says "Ecological Monkey Area". Wow....what a difference from "Joking Monkey Zone"



This is a cute bench I saw....it would really look nice in my backyard.....I WANT IT!!



We got to try some more tea before we left! For those of you that mentioned about the last tea looking nasty or weird.....this is what tea looks like w/o the leafs...



Since I can't go to Disneyland....this really excited me when I saw it!








Finally......this is one of my favorite pic that I took over the lake. It looks so......simple and peaceful.....it's so nice to be able to get away from our busy life once in a while and just enjoy the rest of the world other then our own.



Well....this is pretty much my exciting trip and I hope there is more to come! My next trip I want to go on is to see some PANDAS!

Trip # 1 Part 2

I've been extremly busy lately that I haven't really had time to finish the rest of my trip but if I don't do it now....I will never find time to....so here I go.

Let's see where I've left off.....

Ok....anyways....LeShan was pretty kool with the Big O Buddha and all but it was really tiring caz of the whole claming up and down....by the time we got back up to the top....I was exausted!!! The first thing I did was that I went and bought me a good old fasion COKE! Anywayz...we found our tour guide and he instructed us to this little hidden place where they have these very special tea.(very expansive too)

Here is a pic of my Coke next to our teas.

Tea is very popular in China and especially around here. There are soooo many different kind of tea and who knows how many ways of making it. One of the most popular activity here is drink tea. People actually gather and share the taste of the tea and they do this as an enjoyment and for relaxation. These teas are nothing like the ones you've tasted in the US chinese restaurants. It tastes so much better and you will find it quite unique if you learn to like it.

Here is a pic of my cup of tea!

After our tea time, we headed over to our hotel....which was ok for the price that we paid for....I can pretty much sleep anywhere so it wasn't a big deal to me. We settled in very quickly and headed out for dinner. Food was once again....ok....for the price we paid for....lol....n e wayz we ate pretty fast caz we didn't want to miss the show.

This show is called "The Sound of Emei" which consisted a serious of tricks, martial arts, hand shadow, puppets, and a very famous trick called "Face Off". I recorded this on video and if you have time, hit me and and I'll show it to you. Overall it was a really good show, I really enjoyed it and had an embarrasing but yet interesting moment

Here are some pics I took from the show but it doesn't even show half of what was in the show because there was just so many different performance....so I have most of it on video.

Ok....I'm going to have to call it a day for now....I still have another part to this trip that I'd like to share.... but I've been working for the past 24 hours in the last 28 hours.....and I can hardly keep my eyes opened....see yall later when I feel better....