21 may 2007 Philadelphia

Another day off! The night b4, yeyan, eileen n i did some last minute planning n together with 2 guys, jiayi n wanghui who were in charge of our security, we made our way to philadephia! The only prior knowledge i had of phili was the cheese.. =X We took nj 552 to a.c and change to 553 to phili. Its been a long time since we see tall buildings, coz the building around wildwood are only afew storeys high. Before that, we had thought it would take us some time to get to chinatown, but to our surprise, the bus terminal was right in the middle of chinatown! The first sight that greeted us was the chinese gate. Wah instantly we were blended into familiar land with chinese signboards and chinese ppl all over.

First off, we stopped at a shop that sold chinese snacks like dumplings, soya bean drink, yau tiao, tangyuan n many more.. All of us ordered a 豆腐花 each. Yes they called it just the way hk call it. And i even ordered mine in canto. Some of them had the salty one, which they said is very common in china. I chose one that had peanuts in it.

After that on the way to the historical area, we chanced upon Egypt-A-Delphia at Franklin Square, which had some egyptian exhibits.

We also chanced upon the Federal Reserve bank of Philadelphia. They were having an exhibit on what else but $$. It was quite interesting to get to know a little of the usd. And this also started my collection of quarters! Each of the states in US have or is gg to have their own design on quarters, so far ard 40plus states have already been out. And i got the latest one for the state of washington at the place.

At the historical area, the first thing we saw was ppl digging the ground. yup it was the president's house and they were trying to see if there were any artifacts in the ground. Along the way, there were horse carriages, and they smelt.. but they have a bag-like thing attached to the back for the horse to poo poo. Good at least dun need to worry about steppin on horse shit.



We visited the famous liberty bell. It's quite amazing that they have a whole exhibition devoted to the bell and its history. Liberty.. Independence.. Freedom from slavery.. It was quite crowded with both tourists fm other countries like china and japan, as well as local school kids.
THere were also many victorian styles buildings like museums, churches.. But many of the places were closed that day..
For lunch, we headed back to chinatown to yum cha and had dim sum. Surprisingly, the food tasted quite good, although the service has a lot to improve on.

Us with chopsticks!

At LOVE park.

Proud to see our Singapore flag

We also went to the King Tut exhibit. Quite a good one, but we were quite disappointed as we din get to see the real mummy. As the entrance fee was not cheap (even though we took the student price), we all viewed the exhibits very attentively, reading most of the explanations. The egyptians at that time reallie paid a lot of attention on details as seen from the things they had at that time, esp to show the king's power as well as stability. We were abit suspicious though because a lot of the exhibits were in just good condition that it seems unbelivable that they had gotten it from such a long time ago.

For dinner, we again went back to chinatown to eat. It showed how deprived of chinese food we are.. Ate at this eatery that sell roasted meat. A pity we went to the wrong shop instead of the one recommended. The food wasnt nice at all. A lot of fats in the meat..