The weather has just turned autumn yesterday evening and it was really cold when I woke up this morning despite wearing a pair of socks when I went to sleep.

I think finally I have the time to blog what happened over the weekends when we went to Lv Lin Resort. From now onwards, I will be uploading one blog post with two days content or I will really die of overload here due to the pictures.

So on Saturday morning, we reported early in the morning at 730am to find the buses late to bring us to Lv Lin Resort. The transport system in China is really very unpredictable at times. The worst thing was that I was having abdominal problems in that morning so I decided to take a medicine from Millison and luckily it subsided for awhile. So while waiting for the bus, the whole Ngee Ann took a group photo which I don’t have it with me now.

Finally the bus came and we boarded the bus.



Then on our way, we had our tour guide for the 2 days trip, who is actually also a student from Wuhan University studying Tourism Management, Candy (小陈). She is a very good tour guide as she really gives insights of Wuhan to us and she always try to keep us entertained which is a very good thing. Even though that she admitted that her English is not good, I find that she is really very brave to admit that her English is not good. She also explained to us why her English name was Candy and the reason was that her teacher found that her smile was really sweet. The best part of the bus trip was that she asked us Riddles, as in Chinese “Cold Jokes”, while we were on our 4 hours trip there.



However, most of the people on the bus were asleep as they were all very tired from waking so early, leaving those of us who were sitting at the front of the bus to chat with Candy. Unfortunately, my stomach gave me problems again this time and I broke out in cold sweat. I knew that I need to go to the toilet but I was struggling that whether I should tell the bus to pull over as everyone will need to stop and it will delay the trip. In the end, I couldn’t take it and I asked Candy whether is it possible for the bus to pull over at any random toilet on the road side as I really couldn’t take it. Luckily, she told me that it is possible and she asked the driver to pull over at the next petrol station that he saw and the whole bus took a break.

Definitely, I was the first one to rush down the bus to go to the toilet, but I was also the first one, to find myself in the worst toilet conditions that I have had in my whole life. Trust me; you wouldn’t want to see what the contents inside the gap are.



This toilet that I visited, is seriously worse that any of the coffee shop toilets that I had visited in Singapore. Firstly, the smell is horrendous. Secondly, the whole toilet is infested with flies. Thirdly, the whole toilet look as if it is going to collapse anytime with walls that has the colour of what you see on the floor.

A lot of things were seriously going through my mind when I was stucked there. However, I told myself, if I can survive excreting my waste in this kind of environment here. I can do it anywhere in Singapore because I believe that there wouldn’t be any toilet back in Singapore that could be as terrifying as this.

So, after the toilet trip, I was feeling much better and I started to ask Candy more about China and shared with her what is in Singapore throughout the whole trip with Wen Liang and Tony. Suddenly, as we were going past the rural area, we noticed something very interesting by the roadside.



When we found out from Candy what it was, she said that the farmers are actually drying their just harvested rice grains on the roadside. Definitely, I was astonished. I was wondering how in the world people can just dry rice on the road?! The rice would be contaminated with dust and dirt when a vehicle drives past it. In Singapore, this is totally absurd as we are definitely not allowed to even stop our cars or have any vehicles stopping in the area beside the white line.

Another thing was that vehicles don’t stay in their own lane and they could just cut over to the lane that you are travelling, totally heads-on, without any notice. In Singapore, this is really a big tattoo and I would anticipate that Singaporeans would have already got into an accident straight.



Then as we were going up the mountains, we managed to take some of the photos and the valley is really very deep. I think we were like 200m above sea level? Reason being is that I could feel my ears being blocked up when the bus was going up the hill.



Then another tour guide from Lv Lin Resort joined us.



So when we had reached the place, we went for lunch before our water rafting and seriously, that was the first day ever since I reached Wuhan and I had a decent meal which is having something that is close to the Singapore taste. The black fungus and shredded lean meat was the best dish that I had eaten here in China.



Then, we went to get our straw shoes before we go for our water rafting.



Even though the feeling of the shoe was very pricky and uncomfortable at the beginning, after when we went down into the water, the shoes just became like a plant that was wrapped around your feet. It just seemed so magical?



Most of us didn’t manage to capture even a single shot of the scenery that we saw when we were rafting as it will make our camera wet. That was a total waste because the scenery there was really a sight to behold.

So after around 3 hours of rafting, we finally reached the end point and everyone went to shower to get the smell of the river water off our body. After which, I immediately rushed down the bus to take some snap shots of whatever I could take from the scenery at the end point before the bus actually set off to the Beauty Valley (美人谷).



I cannot believe that they actually also have a system like in Wild Wild Wet where the keeping of the rafts are semi-automated.



We didn’t do much at the Beauty Valley except for hiking and taking pictures of the majestic waterfalls that we saw.



After the hike, everyone was totally burned out and tired. We headed back to the Resort for dinner and we went into our hotel room which looks superb.



Finally, up to that day, I had a proper toilet to use for sanitary purposes. I seriously felt like crying (literally) when I saw this kind of toilet as it really reminds me of the toilet at home (as in Singapore home) even though it is smaller and some of the facilities is better.



So that was the only night where I had a proper shower and I can blow my hair dry using the hair dryer in the bathroom.

To add on, there is a television in the room which I find that, it is really something that I treasure right now. The channels in China are quite interesting as they have more public channels than Singapore (definitely). I was watching the discovery channel that night which was talking about doctors delivering cubs for a tigress which was not able to give birth normally.

After which, I went to dreamland and Sunday came. We woke up at 7am and went for breakfast at 8am. The breakfast wasn’t too bad as it kind of fits the Singapore context with the dough fritters, hard boiled eggs and steamed buns.



We went for a hike in the mountains which was like 800m above sea level and the view was magnificent. This mountain was used by the Lv Lin Army to fight the enemies off in the past, even in World War 2, and therefore, it became very famous.



After so much sightseeing, we went for a horse ride which was really fun however; it left me with a backache and gluteus ache. There was a video taken on Jehanne’s camera which I have not gotten from her. The video was kind of funny especially the expression on my face when I was coming back from the 1 round of run on the horse.



We went down the mountain to a temple and at there; an old man was actually helping people to do divination. Definitely, I went to let him take a look and some of the things that he said were really true.



When the tour at the temple ended, I got 2 souvenirs back for my family and we went back down for lunch before we finally sat on the 4 hour bus ride back to campus again.