Top 5 Cities To Travel In South East Region Of China

We took MAS B777 from KLIA to Shanghai’s Pu Dong International Airport. The wobbling journey took us 5 hours from 9:40am to 2:40pm to reach Shanghai. Since Malaysia and China are within the same time zone, we didn’t experience any time lag when we reached Shanghai. We had a complimentary refreshment of omelette set lunch on board (which is the advantage of MAS over Airasia in the same budget range) and a power nap thenafter, so we were all reasonably refreshed when stepping out of the Boeing’s and took the first breath of cool air in Shanghai. The temperature there was reported as 19°C which was cool.

Being the nature of vacation package in a group, we spent some extra time in baggage claim, group calling, meeting up the local tour guide, instead of exploring more of the airport, checking the bus service and people seeing. Once everything was in order, after knowing our local tour guide was a HangZhou lady called Ah Mei who was going to lead us for the rest of the trip, we were brought to our dedicated excursion bus and headed to the city centre of Shanghai.

Alright. There was a short story of our safe arrival in Shanghai. Before we reached the city centre in another one and a half hour, Ah Mei briefly explained to us what or where we were going to see and visit in the next 8 days and 7 nights at 5 important cities in the south east region of China and I jotted down these itineraries here:

1. Shanghai - Visit to ChengHuangMiao shopping district, the central feature of a large retail and entertainment district; Try the local  snacks there as ChengHuangMiao is really well called ‘the kingdom of snacks’; visit the Oriental Pearl TV tower, the tallest communication tower in Asia and third tallest in the world; Night cruise along HuangPuJiang river, admiring both the east and west side of the river; Visiting the Bund, the historical street of Shanghai; Also is the Nanjing Street, the shopping paradise, and Xing Tian Di, the Shanghai’s version of our Bangsar; Lastly is Tung Ren Tang, the chinese pharmacy;
   
2. HangZhou - Visit the Long Bridge garden and Orioles Singing in the Willow; To view ten scenes of the West Lake of Hangzhou, including the Broken Bridge, Su Causeway; In the evening, enjoy the show “Night of Hangzhou”; Joining the boat ride on West Lake, admiring the scenery of Leifeng Pagoda; Also to visit the West Lake museum and Xi Tian Di, another well known street for bars and cafes; For chinese tea lovers, Dragon Well tea farm must not be missed; Lastly, WanSong Academy is well known for its students, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the folk legend of love story;
   
3. Suzhou - Visit Wuzhen, a 1300 year old waterside town, the eastern Venice of China, before arriving at Suzhou; Visit the Lion Forest Garden, or the kingdom of rockeries with labyrinthine man-made limestone mountains with winding pathways and caverns as well as pavilions, terraces and tower; Jinji lake photo taking session; Hanshan Temple, the famous local temple; Visit the world’s renown silk factory, experience the process of getting the silk from the silkworm; At night, GuanQian Street is the famous shopping streets with lots of local snacks and cheap shoes and boots;
   
4. Nanjing - The significant historical city of China; Visit the Yangzte river bridge, the first bridge built across the Yangtze river or ChangJiang of China; Shopping at FuZhi Temple street, buy more and more stuffs for your trip; Drop by the Song Mei Ling Residence, admiring how she and her husband, Mr. Jiang Jie Shi, the President of the Republic of china, enjoyed their life here; DongShuiGuan is an important heritage as the city wall of the ancient Ming dynasty; Lastly, visit the jade factory, and
   
5. Wuxi - the famous city of Yixing clay teapot origin; admiring the beautiful scenery of LingShan giatn buddha. With Lingshan mountain at its backdrop, the 88m high bronze statue is the highest standing buddha statue outdoor and is one of the largest buddha statue in China; Enjoy a special fountain show called JiuLongGuanYu, experiencing the birth of buddha; Transfer to Li Lake for photo taking session; Visit pearl factory and shopping at Parkson at night.
   

 It’s hard to believe that all these itineraries could be covered within 8 days but we surely had. That was also why my Lumix worked really hard to snap over 2 thousands photos, trying to capture every single scene of the trip. I’m going to start blogging on all these tourist attractions that we have been to in coming posts. Subscribe to enjoy free updates on RSS feeds. - Travel Feeder.

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Hurray! Finally! 1 day to go before my family and I going on board for our vacation travel to Shanghai! Though it will definitely be a rushing tour since we joined the destination-packed travel package, there is still something that I’m looking forward to: beautiful sceneries for my photo album! During this 8D7N tour, I would expect some huge proportions of time being spent on travelling, be it on bus or train, travelling from 1 destination to the other. I don’t really mind as long as there would have good weather and great scenes for shooting , instead, rains and overcast weather of autumn seems to be my bigger worry. Let’s hope for the best.

Only 24 hours away, what have I prepared so far? Other than those normal items in my packing list, I found that it is quite challenging to get prepared for a whole-week-long winter travel in a country that you haven’t been to before. Here are the top 5 challenges I am facing or have rather overcome before my winter travel to Shanghai:

1. The biggest challenge of mine in this final day is to pack sufficient (or necessary?) winter clothing for the trip - According to the weather forecast, Shanghai at this moment is having an average temperature of 8 to 15 degree C, which is cold for someone from a tropical country like me. Packing those thick winter clothing into our small cabin baggage seems to be our biggest challenge! Last night, we decided to check-in our baggage finally (though it’s not my preference after some bad experience with check-in baggage damage years ago). This will allow us to expand our travel bag to an additional space of 30% and that would be enough for all our staffs;
2. The second challenge during the preparation of this trip is things that need to bring along - Shanghai is not a commonwealth country so their power sockets are different from what we are having here in Malaysia. In order to plug in our chargers (handphone and camera), we need to bring along an adapter socket; Another item in our packing list is umbrella (Brella… ella…er…er..) since weather forecast tells us that rains is expected during the period;
3. The 3rd challenge is the amount of Ren Min Bi (or Yuan) we need to bring along - Since money changers in Shanghai are ‘famous’ for their expensive rate, and we can’t use this currency in Malaysia, a more accurate estimation is preferred which I should consider monies for extra night tour, local snacks and souvenirs;
4. The 4th challenge is to prepare staffs for our children - We are not bringing our children along for this long trip (in terms of distance and quite long period). Chloe would be taken care of by my sister-in-law while Dylan would stay with our baby sitter. 2 care takers means 2 separate baggages are needed. I would say packing staffs for children is as tough as ours; and
5. The final challenge is to inform whoever necessary and dedicate well of all my works in hand - On top of that, I have asked favours from my brother in law to drop-by my house once or twice for whatever reasons. Finally I’m going to leave my car in the workshop for major service during this period of time.

Whatever it is, apart from all these challenges, I am looking forward to a wonderful vacation travel to the Shanghai Bund. For those who are interested to read more on my travel experience to Shanghai, you may prefer to subscribe to my RSS Feeds for FREE future updates. Cheers! - Travel Feeder.

Since I bought it 2 weeks ago, I have been practising and exploring all the features of this Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 compact camera with no reservation. Until this morning, I have shot a total of 1100 photos which I think is quite enough to understand, if not fully, the characteristics of my new toy. I did this evaluation exercise with 2 reasons: One being so ‘hot’ and tempted to shoot photos while it is still new and fresh in my hands, while the other resaon is to try out and figure out the capabilities of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 in handling all kinds of environment, situations and lighting (not in the rain of course:) ) before I take it along as my new travel camera to Shanghai in another 11 days!

However, I need to stop this evaluation exercise at once (or temporarily?) before my travel blog turned into a Tech savvy blog . As a conclusion, I have summarised 5 top ‘Wow’ factors of my new camera, Lumix DMC-FZ28 which I just can’t resist to show off!

1. 18x Ultra Zoom - One of the biggest selling points of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX28 is its awesome 18x optical zoom (though the latest Canon boosts up to 20x) from 27mm wide angle to 486mm telephoto. Thanks to the business collaboration between Panasonic and Leica, FZ28 uses a multi elements Leica’s high precision DC VARIO-ELMARIT zoom lense that produce stunning and bright telephoto picture while keeping the least distortion to wide landscape; 27mm Wide Angle View
   

   27mm Wide Angle View

   

   486mm Telephoto View

2. Optical Image Stabiliser - This is also one of the strongest weapon of Panasonic with its proprietory O.I.S. technologies that produces one of the best stabilised image even in those shaky hands like me . I’ve tried to shoot a night object with 1 sec exposure and the result was to my biggest shock!;
   

   Awesome O.I.S. stabilised this dark image for 1 second!

3. Intelligent Auto - Also the Panasonic’s proprietory features, this camera is equipped with the latest Intelligent functions of such as Intelligent ISO, Intelligent Exposure and off course, the fully Intelligent Auto for Point-and-Shoot. The IA is especially great to me which the camera could detect the scene (either potrait, landscape, macro, night portrait or night landscape)and adjust the setting and colours automatically, when I want to merely point-and-shoot various scenes on vacation but lazy to dial the scene mode. This IA could even trigger macro focusing mode automatically when I point to an object as close as 10mm without pressing any button!;
   

   Intelligent Exposure automatically adjusted highlight and shadow

   

   Intelligent Auto triggered Macro mode when point closely to an object

4. RAW Shooting - Such a big ‘Wow’ for such a competitive price! There is not many cameras in the market at this price range actually allowed to shoot in RAW or RAW+JPEG format! This used to be DSLR dedicated feature is now available in FZ28 for me to shoot in RAW and process it myself later for full flexibilities and creativities (though inexperienced user as me would raher leave it to the camera to post-process my photos most of the time). This is an once-in-a-while feature for me when I decided to shoot some ’serious’ scenery shot (when I hold the camera and stand like a professional photographer ), and
   

   KL Night Scene

   

   Morning Call

5. HD Video - For its selling price or rather my buying price (I bought it for RM1300 which is quite a lot cheaper than the market price of RM1499 ), nobody would expect it to record nice video but it does! Even better, it records video in HD format! And the best, it records while zooming in and out! 

“‘Wow wow wow wow wow”. That’s the top 5 ‘wow’ factor features of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28. Did I mean it is the perfect camera for all? Not quite. Not unless Panasonic incorporated an even better and larger image sensor than 1/2.33″ in this compact ultrazoom camera. However it is definitely the perfect choice for me at the moment.- Travel Feeder.

Yes! My final choice of digital camera for my travel is Panasonic Lumix FZ-28! The decision made was not easy at all as I talked about my 5 finalists before that all have their individual strength and weaknesses (for travel purposes particularly). However, I made my life easier by first decided the shop of purchase. Selangor Photographer is a specialist photo shop in Pertama Complex, KL, which is ‘famous’ for its ‘understanding’ towards customers’ need: NEGOTIABLE PRICE! So, I would decide there for whichever the most value-for-money choice. Unsuprisingly, they offered attractive package price for all my 5 finalists:

1. Canon EOS 1000D - The least competitive package offer which comes with a 4GB SDHC and camera carrying case but is still selling at RRP of RM1999. So I started to convince myself not to choose it and concentrated on its weaknesses (for travel purposes) of bulkiness, sluggish live view composing over LCD, and… nothing much indeed. Oh yes, no operation manual included and it’s expensive. OK! At least 1 finalist’s out!
2. Panasonic Lumix FX38 - Their offer for this compact’s was slightly cheaper than the market’s: RM50 less but still comes  with 4GB SDHC, carrying case and mini tripod. However, the price was not convincing enough for my temptation and lack of P,A,S and M shooting mode (which I found useful and neccessary) meant I would rather choose SX110IS…;
3. Canon Powershot SX110IS - With their cheaper offer price of RM1050 with 4GB SDHC, case, tripod and 2 AA batteries (the only camera here that uses AA instead of Lithium Ion battery), it was hard to convince one not to choose it. What is lacking is indeed … not much… but is not a definite ‘no’. It’s a camera which you would not find any major deficiencies… and superiority either! 10x optical zoom is better than some but not the best in the range; Body size is quite compact but not the most compact; Looks good but not stunning…. It has shied away from me’
4. Nikon Coolpix P80 - It is the most value-for-money model in my list: offerred price of RM1200 with 4GB, case and tripod. It has the stunning 18x optical zoom lens, full manual control of P,S,A,M, Nikon trademarked of perfect colur tone, stylish design and the most compact bridge camera in the market except…. it was out of stock in the whole market for 2 months! They said I could wait for a month to ’see’ if there is any new stock coming, which I couldn’t! So, I have to convince myself again for its shortfalls in features of such as Auto-focus tracking and unable to shoot RAW! It was out!
5. Panasonic Lumix FZ28 - Tang Tang Tang Tang! Here comes the winner! Though it is not the best value-for-money option on offer, apart from P80 (on paper only as no stock available!), Fz28 is the second best value-for-money I could get from this shop: RM1350 c/w 4GB SDHC, carrying case, mini tripod and UV filter lens! It has all things and features that I could think of: 18x zoom, RAW+JPEG shooting, fully customisable shooting mode, flexible composing options, stylish, LEICA distortion free lens, also comes with lens hood, rechargeable Lithium Ion batteries, lens cap, strap, with optional lens converter adapter for wide angle or telephoto converter lenses. For this kind of value, Panasonic Lumix Fz28 is unbeatable with its price except some could still criticize its puny 1/2.33″ CCD sensor, relatively bulky for travelling, too big to hide it inside pocket and less vibrant color tone (it shoots the least vivid image among this group of 5 cameras).

For me, the advantages of Panasonic Lumix Fz28 are more than enough to compromise on its deficiencies. Moreover, with a price of RM200 more than compact’s and RM650 less than DSLR, it finally won my heart effortlessly. I decided to grab it for good sake! While I’m typing out this post with my right hand, my left hand is already holding my new toy Fz28. The countdown to my Shanghai vacation trip continues. :) - Travel Feeder.