This is default featured slide 1 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.

This is default featured slide 2 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.

This is default featured slide 3 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.

This is default featured slide 4 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.

This is default featured slide 5 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.

Removed

My blog has moved!

You will be automatically redirected to the new address. If that does not occur, visit
http://myjourneystories.com
and update your bookmarks.

Pages

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Chinatown – Singapore


        On our honeymoon last January 2013, we bought cheap flight tickets to Vietnam. The good news was the tickets were not direct ones but had transfers in Kuala Lumpur. Although we had four days before we flew to Vietnam, we chose to spend the most days in Singapore for we thought it was more fun in Singapore than Kuala Lumpur. We were right. I personally have visited Singapore in 2003 but I almost forgot how the country looked like. I was curious to know the present Singapore so I decided to visit it again. We departed from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore by train. As soon as we arrived in Singapore, we headed to Chinatown to find the cheapest lodging where we would stay for the next two nights. Chinatown is famous for its cheap lodgings, foods and stuffs!!! Since we had not booked any inn, we totally had no idea where we would stay. Praise the Lord, God brought us to meet two grandfather and grandmother who escorted us to their lodging. There was still an empty room so we just checked in. The room was very clean and comfortable.

DSC_0582

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Taipei 101 台北101 – Taiwan, China


        Can you guess what is the tallest building in the world now? You will find out the answer if you go to Dubai. However, before the construction of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, from 2004 to 2010 Taipei 101 in Taiwan had fetched the crown as the highest skyscraper in the world. Formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, the building is located in Xinyi District, Taipei. It was awarded LEED Platinum Certification and became the largest green building in the world. Designed by C.Y. Lee and partners and established mainly by KTRT Joint Venture, the building was finished in 2004 and cost approximately 1.7 billion dollars. It was officially opened for public on December 31, 2004 on the New Year’s eve. Ever since, it has become the icon of the modern Taiwan.

P1010241

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

National Palace Museum 国立故宫博物院 – Taiwan, China


        The next day our friends took us to the National Palace Museum. Just like its name, the museum is a national museum of the Republic of China that exhibits almost 700,000 pieces of Chinese antiques and artifacts dating back from the Neolithic age to the Qing Dynasty including ancient bronze castings, calligraphy, scroll paintings, porcelain, jade, and rare books. Due to its huge number of collections, the museum becomes the largest museum that exhibits Chinese ancient antiques in the world. The displays are among China’s best quality pieces collected by ancient Chinese emperors.
        The Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing, Mainland China shares the same origin with the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The National Palace Museum was originally founded in the Forbidden City in Beijing that explains why the word "Palace" is used in its name.The division of the two was caused by the Chinese civil war. The Chinese call the one in Mainland China, Beijing Gugong (北京故宮), while the one in Taipei is called Taipei Gugong (台北故宫). In 1931, when Chiang Kai Shek was the President of the Republic of China in Mainland China, he commanded the museum in Beijing to prepare the most valuable pieces of its collections ready to be evacuated out of the city to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Japanese Army during the Sino-Japanese war. Following that, the Chinese civil war in 1949 imposed Chiang Kai Shek to evacuate about 600,000 of the most prized items to Taiwan. However, before all the pieces could be transported to Taiwan, the communists had conquered the museum so not all collections could be evacuated to Taiwan. Since then, the collections have been a matter of dispute between the government of the People’s Republic of China and the government of Taiwan. The Mainland China accused that the collections were stolen and they actually belonged to the People’s Republic of China. Countering the accusation, Taiwan argued that they were just trying to save the collections from destruction during the Cultural Revolution. However, nowadays the tensions between the two governments have warmed and the Mainland China has agreed to “lend” the collections to the Taipei museum considering that the relics in both the Mainland China and Taiwan are China’s cultural heritage.
 
P1010267