Saturday, July 03, 2010

We are back from Shanghai!!

We're back! Shanghai was amazing! It was the boys and my first time in China, and Shanghai was just mind blowing in so many ways. First, the immense scale of everything, from the airport, to the highways, the train station, the endless skyscrappers and city-scape, the people everywhere, always busy traffic, shopping of every kind that stays open till past 10pm everyday, the city lights at night, what a buzz! Being in China is a unique experience for us, there's a certain home-coming feeling, where everyone speaks our 'mother-tongue' - chinese/mandarin, which we can speak and understand fairly well (the boys to a lesser extent), everyone we met were very happy to find that we are Singaporean chinese (even though we are usually speaking in english to each other) and we felt a closeness and very welcome!
Shanghai is very modern and a far bigger city than Singapore, and we found its old world charm delightful - the grand european architecture/buildings, mixed with the chinese style buildings and quaint shikumen homes and alleys, all a wonderful and fascinating mix.We loved wandering the streets and felt quite at home, the only main difference being the noise level was a lot higher as there were always so many people around and so much traffic! Although we travelled on our own, we had a fair share of tourist trap attractions and authentic local experiences, and enjoyed them all!
We also visited the nieghbouring Suzhou and Hangzhou famed for their beautiful gardens and lake, and of course had a fascinating time at the World Expo. For the 3 days we visited the Expo - an average of 400,000 people did too, making the average waiting time at popular countries' pavillions 3-4 hours long (Japan and Germany's pavillions was 5 hours wait on one of the days!!), so we decided to skip the countries that we've ever visited, or will likely have a chance to visit, and went to those pavillions of countries that we may never get to visit in real life. That brought us to fascinating North Korea, Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Iceland, some of the South Pacific islands, some of the Africa nations, middle east nations and so on - totally awesome experience!! Well I'd be scrapping all of these photos soon, but for now, a summary layout of highlights from our trip :

It was hard to have to go back to work and school respectively right after the holiday, it's only been a week since we're back, but seems a lot longer now! I had completed two more layouts from Hokkaido trip, will continue to work on these before I start with the rest of Shanghai photos.

This one is when we visited the morning market in Hakodate - you'd never see fresher seafood! There was this tub where squids were swimming around, and if you ordered, they cut them up (raw) (still alive I think- yikes!) and serve it up to you then and there. We passed.
Credits: fish by Dianne Rigdon, alpha by Kristin Aagard
And this layout is just of the many photos we took just strolling the snow-covered streets - totally fascinating to us, awesome really, never seen that much snow, that first day was so joyful, like the first time in Disneyland!
 
Credits: Background papers by Wild Dandelions, string an mittens by Cinnamondesigns,winter word by Dani Mogstad

This template is now available as a set in the store HERE

29 comments:

  1. I've noticed you use a lot of papers with beautiful painted and watercolor effects. Where do you get these? Who is the designer? I love your site!

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  2. Yin,
    Love the pictures from your Shanghai trip. It sounds like a wonderful place to visit.

    Thanks so much for another great template!

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  3. Yin, I love the new pages you created and it was delightful to hear some details of your Shanghai trip!! I will be sure to share your freebie in my next freebie post too. Also, some excellent pages that you showed off by your readers. I really like Jenny's and I've been following her on Flickr.

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  4. AnonymousJuly 03, 2010

    Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave in the DigiFree category today [03 Jul 12:00pm GMT]. Thanks, Maria

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  5. AnonymousJuly 03, 2010

    Thanks... your templates never cease to impress...

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  6. AnonymousJuly 03, 2010

    Thanks a lot for another wonderful Template!

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  7. Thank you. Added it to my huge collection! Many many many thanks for your sharing!

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  8. So glad you had a fabulous trip! I can't wait to see the layouts!

    (I can't imagine waiting 3-4 hours to see some of the exhibits..)

    Thanks for the template..you're the best!

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  9. Thank you for another great template! I LOVE your pages, too.
    Here are a few of the pages I've made with your templates:
    http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=25724&ppuser=12380
    http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=25725&ppuser=12380
    http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=25543&ppuser=12380
    http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=25544&ppuser=12380
    http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=25235&ppuser=12380
    http://www.scrappersguide.com/forums/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=25235&ppuser=12380

    As you can see, I've really enjoyed working with them!

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  10. I love hearing about your adventures, you always take such incredible trips. Thanks for the template, you always so generous!

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  11. Always enjoy your blog and your wonderful layouts. Can't wait to see the new ones.

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  12. Thanks for sharing you life and your templates!

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  13. Thanks for the fun template. I love using these for times when I have multiple pictures. You are the greatest for sharing.

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  14. I was looking at your layouts and I loved the Strolling one, and look at that, you turned it into a template! Thanks!

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  15. Thank you so much for this template, love your layouts.

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  16. AnonymousJuly 13, 2010

    Fabulous templates! Thank you!

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  17. Your trip sounds fantastic and so much fun. Thanks for sharing and also for the great layouts. Thanks for another great template.

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  18. thank you for another awesome template!

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  19. Love the layouts from you and people who've used them. Inspiration at it's best. Thanks for the template.

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  20. Love seeing photos from all your trips, and your those from Shanghai are no exception.

    Thanks for the wonderful template!

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  21. AnonymousJuly 19, 2010

    A friend sent me here...thank you for sharing your wonderful templates! I am new to scrapbooking and enjoying getting ideas from your blog!
    Stephanie

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  22. AnonymousJuly 25, 2010

    Not sure I'm happy with pages from my wedding album and my 40th book being added to your site, these are personal and permission was given for my sister to promote her business....

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  23. thanks for the great template! I can't wait to use it for my Disney album! :)

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  24. Thank you so much for sharing.

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  25. This is so perfect for a trip summary and we are about to go on a trip! Yea!

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  26. Thank you for the awesome templates.

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  27. I love this road template. Thanks so much for being different and for sharing.

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  28. This is one of my absolute favorite layouts. I've used in again and again since you shared it so long ago!

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