China Town, Melbourne

Like quite many China Towns, they are no longer those China Towns we knew.  Found out those shops/restaurants are run by the others.  The only thing I noticed is that they do maintain the old style China Town of the 60's, especially I ran into the so-called Nationalist Party.  See how they romanized in English on the right side Kai Mia Tang which is not a Mandarin pronounciation，and further 美利濱 as  Melbourne.    

Suspended in time, China Town, Penang

When a place wasn't intended for any development, everything seemed to have been suspended in time.  Saw some classic Chinese herb without too much chemical preservatives. A travel agent in the old days for checking various travel needs.  A grocery selling some old time preserved food and goodies.  A tea room for our social gathering and slowly enjoying dim sum and tea, and the nostalgic 七星伴月月餅 (seven salty egg yolks in a big moon cake) (*note not the adapted version of the 7 mini moon cakes around 1 big one).  Paper and transparent lanterns....  No electronic toys at all.  Even the local Chinese people are having their heart warming smiles and happy helping for your travel directions.  Not a smiley face on the screen with some sacrastic messages.  I do hear people "laughing out loud".  I do see people "thanks with a true smile".  I see my mother, my father, my grand ma and my aunts and uncle....

Chan Zhou Yui restaurant, China Town, BKK

Lucky that we could get a table on our walk-in.    This time all the dishes were a bit better than the last visit of a few years ago.  Probably it's quite early (at 6-7pm) when the chefs weren't too busy.  Among all the dishes, I somehow like the dessert - reverse sugar-syrup-sugar taro.  It looks so simple but the way of making is of a very high cooking technique.  Cooke the sugar to melt with the taro chunks and then dry it back with the sugar coated evenly on it.  Usually quite many restaurant may not have the taro cooked well (either too hard or uncooked).  Or the sugar coating in the final step would be messed up.  

China Town, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The China Town area is busier than the other districts.  Seems like the locals pretty much enjoy some Chinese food.

China Town, London

Yau Wa Ra Road (China Town) 耀華力路 BKK

Photo 1: I guess I have brought almost everyone I know to this restaurant in China Town. Someone liked this shop so much. After all, China Town hasn't changed much, and still our trace to something nostalgic and suspended in time. *2&3: Very nice freshly squeezed pink guava juice.

Park Regis, Clarke Quay/China Town, Singapore

Park Regis (an Australian branded hotel) is in between Clark Quay and China Town. If possible and if you know Singapore well, better get a hotel not near the Marina, Financial and Orchard areas. There will be surcharge of around HK$500 to $700 for weekdays. So if you book a 4 star hotel (like this one) at HK$2,000, that will be even more. Then air ticket also has surcharge for weekdays. Actually there are quite different surcharges. I even found out the taxi has double the fares with those surcharges on this visit. I paid S$20 ($11 fare and $9 surcharge for rush hour and CBD) for a journey about 2km (but that taxi driver took a big turn). S$1 = HK$6.5 now. Was S$1 = HK$3.8, then 4, 5... So it's HK$130 for a 2 km trip.

Actually over the past few years, if I go to Singapore, I need to book a hotel near the subway. There are times if I had my dinner and it's about 10pm. You can hardly get a taxi. It's because after 11pm, there is 50% extra charge on the fare. There comes a scene that most of the taxis are on calls in the street, because on-call also has surcharges of S$3-5.

Back to this hotel, it's a very new one. The design is a bit strange that the living room is at the back end (facing a wall) with the bath room in the middle. As you can see, if you have kids, they would love to play hide-and-seek in this room. Overall, it's a good room as compared to other hotels I stayed before.