Destination: QUANZHOU & XIAMEN (Part 2)

( Continuation of my Destination: QUANZHOU & XIAMEN photo diary Part 1 and Part 3)

Day 3

Today was allotted to shopping, food, and more shopping. If you are wondering why we aren't touring around is because there's really nothing to see in this part of China. All one could see are wholesale shops scattered everywhere. We all woke up late and after having brunch at home, we headed out to start burning some cash! Our first stop was this shoe store Exull. It sells good quality shoes at fairly low prices.

We went to a shoe store because of this! My MOP280 boots from Macau suddenly started to shed skin. (-_-)

Two boots caught my attention but guess which one I picked?

Walking the streets of Pai Huai, I stumbled on this photo studio. When my good friend Lyn of Mentalfeet visited me in Xiamen while I was doing a study tour, we had a pictorial session at the same photo studio when I took her to see Quanzhou. We had one JUST BECAUSE! :P Since I had nothing important planned today, I decided to have an impromptu photo shoot of myself. (Pardon my vanity!!!)

Since most of the people in China are Buddhist, a marriage between two people will consist of some Chinese bowing ritual to the elders, a beautiful pictorial, and a wedding reception at some nice hotel. That is how people in China get married. So with that, you can see a lot of photo studios everywhere.

Upon entering, we were ushered upstairs to talk about the package I want to avail. I just took a basic one which costs RMB400 or roughly P2,600. My pictorial includes: 3 dresses to use, 15 high resolution pictures, a portrait, key chain with front and back pictures, a book, and one 4r picture with frame.

Look at those beautiful dresses! After 20 minutes of deliberation I finally chose one short dress and two ball gowns.

Behind the scenes photo taken by my baby sister Rin.

This was my second outfit change.

Here are a couple of the final shots I chose.

My third dress.

After 3 hours of pictorial, we went to this small eatery to have some Maki Meat Soup. It was about 11 degrees and we were all freezing cold.

Don't ask me what's in it because I could hardly tell.

Since we couldn't hail a cab, my sister insisted we try this tricycle which almost collided with another vehicle and killed us all!

At night, we decided to watch The Hobbit at Wanda Plaza. At the parking area, we saw this itsy bitsy tiny car! How cute is that?!

Day 4

We didn't do much today because at night was Baby Arian's To-Tseh or her first birthday party. We bought balloons and just picked up the birthday cake that afternoon.

The party's venue was at House Honors Banquet.

Day 5

The next morning, our parents woke us up early to do some Temple Pai-Pai.

Apparently, all of these people wanted to do the same thing at 8 in the morning.

We were asked of our Chinese names, year of birth, and also the time we were born so the monks could pray for us? I think?!

After we bought sets of incenses, Chinese money paper, eggs, and other stuff to do the whole 2 hour Pai-Pai Ritual.

We kept on kneeling and bowing all throughout while the monks chanted Chinese prayers.

After praying, everyone went to this area and began cracking hard boiled eggs. I don't really understand the meaning of this but since everyone was doing it, we also did it.

After our Temple duty we went to Walmart to get more fruits and other grocery items.

We also had lunch at this yummy sizzling steakhouse Houcaller!

The grown ups went home to take a nap while my sisters and I went to Zhong Shan Lu. This is the shopping district.

Everything being sold was winter items so I didn't get much.

I got a lot of cute kuting-tings from Sanfu. This was also the place I frequented while I was studying back then.

On the way home we passed by Daphne shoe store! It's like Staccato which is also a Chinese brand you can find at CMG stores here in Manila. I so love the shoes here!

Boots caught my attention again. I picked the blue one because I feel it's easier to pair with than going with the maroon colored one.

To be continued...

Have A Lovely Day!