Day 5 – Free and Easy Day! Shopping + 步行街

Woke up at 930am. We are told to meet at the hostel lobby at 10am. Thankfully, I’m the first one to wake up so that I can use the toilet first. We (Me, Yu Chuan, Nicholas) were late, and we felt very bad because we are late, and all of our friends are waiting for us.

Took bus at 建设一路 bus stop to 江汉路 (the place where we do our shopping). The bus journey is around 30 minutes. We have the chance to have a view of the Yangtze River. Unfortunately, I was unaware of the surrounding because the bus is packed with people!
After 45 minutes, we arrived at Shopping Mall. When we heading to the shopping mall, we saw this kid, he is a street performer. He was doing hand stand in the middle of bustling street. We stopped and took photographs of him because in Singapore, there are no kid street performers.
After we arrived at the shopping mall, we were split into small groups so that we can do our shopping faster. We are also instructed by our trip leader that to meet at the MacDonald’s at 5pm after our shopping.

Initially, I was with my group of friends. We are thinking whether to have lunch first or shop first. Later on, after deciding, my group of friends went to eat, while I stayed with another group of friends who want to shop first. We are scattered around the shopping mall and I was with my girlfriend in the end.

We went to eat first because after surveying the shopping mall, we got hungry. We head to this 汤包 restaurant to have 汤包. We ordered 虾仁汤包. The filling is minced pork and prawn. It’s SUPER nice!! I and my girlfriend love it very much. Later on, we went to ‘Coco’ drink stall to have Pudding Milk Tea. The Coco drink stall is somehow like Sweet talk in Singapore. But their Pudding Milk Tea is very nice. Instead of having pearls for the milk tea, they put pudding with the milk tea. The Milk Tea and Pudding goes very well with each other! After that, IT’S SHOPPING TIME!

The basement of the shopping mall is somehow like our Far East Plaza in Singapore. The design and the style of the stall that are located there is somehow very similar to the one at Far East Plaza in Singapore. My girlfriend bought many things there, because it’s cheaper than Singapore. After shopping for like 3 hours, we are a little hungry. We went to look for small bites. We had Mongolia Pork, Smelly Bean Curd, Honey Chicken Wings and many more. (I forgot!) They are nice food where you can try over there.

After shopping for so long, we finally found the other group of friends. And we realized that they have gone to the other shopping centre to shop. No wonder, we cannot locate them. After meeting our friends, we were told by our trip leader that we are heading to 步行街.
步行街is a long street where shops like Adidas, Nike, Puma, Levis, Rolex, etc. are located. My friends went there to get their shades. Crossing roads at Wuhan is super dangerous because the vehicles will not stop for you. I still remember we were crossing the road, there is this bus, the bus was travelling down the road and for not reason, and the bus did not stop when we are at the zebra crossing. It almost knocked down one of my friends. After that, we head down the jetty to take scenery photos with our respective groups. At there we can get to see the Yangtze River and the Hubei city view. It’s super nice! But there’s always imperfection. We are approached by Beggars over there at the jetty. They are truly stubborn, and one of the beggars almost got our student helper to get irritated.

After that, we went to the Wuhan’s Quay to take a ferry to the place where we settled our dinner. The ferry was packed with people and it’s very hot because of the weather. Once the ferry got moving already, it felt much better. After 20 minutes, we reached our destination. The destination is like a street alley where a lot of food stalls are located there. But we went to a restaurant.

We had 汤包 again for dinner. And some of my friends went to the street to get street food. It’s quite late already, like 2200 hours, we were walking to the bus stop and we saw this street stall who is selling sandal wood key chains. I didn’t get to buy them because we are in the rush. We are rushing for the last bus home. :X
Reach hostel at 2230 hours. Tired, Sticky and Smelly but we had a lot of fun! (:
Reflection: After studying for one week, we finally got time to go free and easy! Hooray!! It is a really fun to travel around with my friends because it really bonds us together. And I hope that everything will get much fluent and I hope that we should do this often so that it will brings us closer and closer together. (: