DAY 5 IN CHONG QING

IT'S 6.20AM

A FRESH DAY AHEAD...

Let's turn back to 5am

Read this.

Yeap.

So we told the receptionist and she sent a person to "open" the door.

Even the person said that it was the first time it happened in the hotel.

Let me share some background story of my hotel room while the person is "opening the door":

There was a creepy CAROUSEL RIGHT OUTSIDE MY ROOM.

I found myself staring at it for some time after the discovery but eventually closed the curtains.

I was crazy enough to stare at it.

(Glad that nothing happened to me. But my friend in another room wasn't so lucky)

And the locker to my toilet door was spoilt. So I couldn't lock the toilet.

While bathing halfway, my shower head handle fell. :)

After closing the tap, IT WAS FREEZING

Yea... summarised my hotel.

Yas, my roommate is finally out.

Luckily he wasn't naked inside. If not he would have frozen to death. 

It was below 10 degrees.

After the ordeal, we had our breakfast.

Well, I forgot to take a picture of it.

But it's just plain porridge and hot milk.

Just look at the temperature.

LE MERIDIEN

It was around 10.10am when we reached Le Meridien Hotel!

Took a class photo before entering!

As expected from a 5-star hotel's lobby.

Our plan originally is to have a cooking session at 11 am.

But since we arrived early, the general manager didn't want us to be hungry.

So he opened up his lobby restaurant for us to have breakfast.

How nice of him :)

(Breakfast Round 2)

There's a bread station.

Drinks and fruits stations

And food from different cultures!

(They serve Dan Dan noodles (担担面), and their specialty 油茶)

They even have an egg station where you can ask them to cook the style that you like!

And some buffet food at the middle.

There were many different ingredients ar the counter and what caught my eye was the fried noodles (The crispy thingy on top).

So I took a plate just to take the fried noodles.

Never did I know that it was an ingredient of the 油茶 until one of the staff approached me after observing me for a while.

So he approached me to ask if he could help me with it.
Eventually, he helped me to mix the ingredients together.
It wasn't what I expected. (I mean, it does looks like porridge doesn't it?)
It tastes DAMN heavenly.
Thus I went around to ask my friends and teachers to try it but it seemed like no one dared to try.
I was really lucky to have someone to help me out with it.

If you come across this. Be sure to try it out. You will not regret.

MALA COOKING CLASS

So Mr. Eric Ang and his head chef booked this restaurant for us the WHOLE DAY.

Not a single customer was able to dine in this restaurant that day.

We felt so important.

And Mr. Ang began introducing us to the MALA hotpot which is called Mao Xue Wang there.

We were supposed to have a cooking competition with my classmates so we formed groups of 7.

This was what we were gonna cook.

So after burning the whole pot, we finally completed cooking.

After cooking, we placed our pot at the judge's table for grading.

They basically asked some of the top staff in Le Meridien to try our food and gives us comments.

My group's mala was the only group which triggered them to drink water.

(Take note that they are actually used to eating spicy food!)

Guess which one is ours!

(Ans at the bottom)

Haha, we got the consolation prize.

The hot pot was supposed to be our lunch.

But since Le Meridien is so generous, they made extra food for us!

Not to forget that we just had a buffet breakfast half an hour ago.

Here is the menu for that day's lunch.

Look at the number of dishes. GG.com

The table was already starting to fill up before we even settle down.

 

Since no one touched the food yet, my friend and I decided to do this HAHA.

The food were presented very nicely! 

Their seafood was very fresh as they said that they were all river farmed.

Mushroom?
Nope! Its actually steamed red bean buns (豆沙包)!

Look!

After having our lunch, we got our hotel cards!

I was really really impressed by this.

They actually customized the hotel cards specially for us!

I was really happy to see my course printed on the room card as I was the only student from my course to sign up for this and it was one of the biggest here!

HOTEL TOUR!

After receiving our room cards, we had a tour around the hotel!

Something that caught my eye is this poster in the staff canteen.

This poster shows the daily menu for the staffs!
This is really impressive for a staff meal!
The staff meal I ever had were only packet food!



There were also a gym and a swimming pool with a nice view for hotel guests!

Next, we visited one of their restaurant called Akebono.


It is a Japanese restaurant which serves common Japanese foods like Sushi and Sake!


We were given a chance to enter the kitchen!
Too bad there wasn't any chef cooking they had no customer in the afternoon.
But look! They have charts on each food to remind the chefs of what is needed for each dish!

After the tour, we had a chance to interview staffs in Le Meridien for our project.
Imma skip this part.

HOTEL ROOM

After the interview, we went to our hotel rooms!

YEAP! LE MERIDIEN NEVER STOP SURPRISING ME.

They prepared these snacks on my hotel table!

If you look closely at the TP logo, it is actually a long sweet with my school printed on it!!

I am sooooo impressed!

If the video wasn't enough.

They also provided us with this map which consists of tourist attractions around Le Meridien.

DINNER

During the free time, we went out to a nearby supermarket to stock up some food for supper.

After the free time, we had a meeting with representatives from different companies as well.

Yeap we had our dinner at the restaurant booked for us.

Our dinner for the night was the famous hot pot in Chong Qing!

We were given a chance to choose if we wanted the Mala pot or the Herbal soup.

Since we flew there, we should try the Mala right?

Look at the spread for a hot pot dinner!
The only sad thing here was that the food here was not refillable.
But my table was fast enough. So we got a second serving of beef meat.


Look at the mini-tree XD.


LOOK AT MY HOTPOT.


After the hotpot arrived, we went to take some sauces.


And when we came back, we saw this.
PURE. HEAVEN

Seems like all the food had arrived, LET"S DIG IN!...
Erm, I felt like I was dying just a few minutes into the dinner...

STORY TIME
Just at that time, my friend beside me told me that she ordered the EXTRA spicy hotpot.
And after taking a look at her pot... I realized something.
THE WAITER GAVE ME THAT EXTRA SPICY POT INSTEAD!


LOOK AT HER POT VS MINE

I die-ded


Even a piece of cabbage is killing me.


I couldn't take it anymore so I took out all the spices I could.
And after this, I took out the oil from the soup too.
Only to realize my whole "soup" is made of oil.
There's no soup at all.

Yea I thanked my friend for giving me such an experience.

FREE TIME

It was 8+ pm and we finally got our free time to shop.

But shops closes at 10pm. So we didn't shop much.

 

All I could lay my hands on were these two food for dessert.

So we went back to the hotel after our "dessert"

And just when I was about to bath, these people appeared HAHAHA.

Ok fast-forward to after I bath,
we ordered pizza for supper!! WOOO


And it arrived at 1am! We were so excited.


This was the brand that we ordered.
It had a 4.5-star rating to it should be good.

To my horror, this is what it looks like.
Sorry if it was too fast XD.
But basically, the pizza crust was really like bread.
And on each slice, there was only one small piece of pineapple or ham. (Hawaii pizza)
My friend ordered pasta and it sucks too.


Oh, I found a picture.

Since it's the last night in Chong Qing, we had fun all night long~~
Time flies and we will be flying back the next day.

OFF TO DAY 6!

Oh, about the answer to the question above,
The answer is... erm... the darkest one.
We flamed the oil for too long.
So it became the spiciest.

STAY TUNED TO THE LAST DAY IN CHONGQING
Or is it...