Gold Reef City

Gold Reef City is a place of pleasure in Joburg.Gold Reef City is a combination of entertainment complex made up of a theme park and casino facilities. Gold Reef City is a combination of fun and fantasy. Located on an old gold mine, the park is themed around the gold rush on the Witwatersrand. Park staff wear period costumes of the 1880s.The buildings built inside the compound designed like the same period.

The Apartheid museum is located next to Gold Reef City, which is a good place to spend to find out more about the apartheid era.The museum exhibits include antique clothing and children's toys, which take the visitor back 100 years to the city that was.The carefully-documented history of Apartheid,beautifully depicted in the Museum, is a must-see on a South African visit. And nowhere else will the tourist find such a comprehensive and colourful depiction of mining life at the turn of the nineteenth century.

The Theme park has an abundance of adventures rides, gaming, restaurants, and tours for you to enjoy. Its a fun place to take the kids. Youngs as well as old enjoy the adventure rides. From the skyline, the Giant Wheel, Anaconda and Tower of Terror will beckon all you find here. The Anaconda is the only inverted roller coaster in the world and is currently the record holder for the fastest and tallest inverted roller coaster in Africa. The Tower of Terror is a vertical drop roller coaster which features a drop of 47 meters, and a pull-out which features a positive G-Force of a massive 6.3G's.

You can also visit the original gold mine in a lift that goes down to 220 meters below the surface.Those interested in gold mining can see the gold-containing ore veins in an old mine, or observe in a small museum how real gold is poured into barrels.Thousands of feet down to a shaft of the Crown Mines there were round the looooong tunnels and the mine workers demonstrated how the gold was mined which gave a vivid impression of the work of the gold-miners.

The casino at Gold Reef City offers abundance of gaming choices. The casino at Gold Reef City is open 24 hours a day. Your gaming options include slots, various tables, for the high rollers and much more. Everyone from international travellers to family groups will find here something to keep them occupied. With 1600 slot machines and 50 tables ranging from Blackjack, Roulette, Baccarat and various different kinds of Poker, there is an abundance of entertainment.

Gold Reef City provides educational aspect to any visit. The combination of Apartheid museum, historical theme park, rides, restuarants and casino is a superb combination.International travellers savour the offering of traditional African music, dance and history found throughout the complex. It is well worth a visit to Gold Reef City, to see how this entertainment package is put together and presented.

Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival (also called Yuanxiao Festival) is on the 15th day of the first Chinese lunar month. It is closely related to Spring Festival.In the old days, people began preparing for the Spring Festival about 20 days before. However, the Lantern Festival,everything returns to normal. Yuan literally means first, while Xiao refers to night. yuanxiao is the first time when we see the full moon in the new year. It is traditionally a time for family reunion.

There are many different beliefs about the origin of the Lantern Festival. But one thing for sure is that it had something to do with religious worship.One legend tells us that it was a time to worship Taiyi, the God of Heaven in ancient times. The belief was that the God of Heaven controlled the destiny of the human world. He had sixteen dragons at his beck and call and he decided when to inflict drought,storms, farmine or pestilence upon human beings. Beginning with Qinshihuang, the first emperor to unite the country, all subsequent emperors ordered splendid ceremonies each year. The emperor would ask Taiyi to bring favorable weather and good health to him and his people. Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty directed special attention to this event. In 104 BC,he proclaimed it one of the most important celebrations and the ceremony would last throughout the night.

Another legend associates the Lantern Festival with Taoism. Tianguan is the Taoist god responsible for good fortune. His birthday falls on the 15th day of the first lunar month. It is said that Tianguan likes all types of entertainment. So followers prepare various kinds of activities during which they pray for good fortune.

The third story about the origin of the festival goes like this. Buddhism first entered China during the reign of Emperor Mingdi of the Eastern Han Dynasty. That was in the first century. However, it did not exert any great influence among the Chinese people. One day, Emperor Mingdi had a dream about a gold man in his palace. At the very moment when he was about to ask the mysterious figure who he was, the gold man suddenly rose to the sky and disappeared in the west. The next day, Emperor Mingdi sent a scholar to India on a pilgrimage to locate Buddhist scriptures. After joumeying thousands of miles,the scholar finally returned with the scriptures. Emperor Mingdi ordered that a temple be built to house a statue of Buddha and serve as a repository for the scriptures. Followers believe that the power of Buddha can dispel darkness.So Emperor Mingdi ordered his subjects to display lighted lanterns during what was to become the Lantern Festival.The custom of lighting lanterns continued. However, the lanterns would develop from small simple ones to those of various color and shape. The scale of the celebration would also increase greatly.


Until the Sui Dynasty in the sixth century, Emperor Yangdi invited envoys from other countries to China to see the colorful lighted lanterns and enjoy the gala performances.By the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in the seventh century, the lantern displays would last three days. The emperor also lifted the curfew, allowing the people to enjoy the festive lanterns day and night. It is not difficult to find Chinese poems which describe this happy scene.In the Song Dynasty, the festival was celebrated for five days and the activities began to spread to many of the big cities in China.Colorful glass and even jade were used to make lanterns, with figures from folk tales painted on the lanterns.However, the largest Lantern Festival celebration took place in the early part of the 15th century. The festivities continued for ten days. Emperor Chengzu had the downtown area set aside as a center for displaying the lanterns. Even today,there is a place in Beijing called Dengshikou.In Chinese,Deng means lantern and Shi is market.The area became a market where lanterns were sold during the day.In the evening, the local people would go there to see the beautiful lighted lanterns on display.


Today, the displaying of lanterns is still a big event on the 15th day of the first lunar month throughout China. People enjoy the brightly lit night. Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, for example, holds a lantern fair each year in the Cultural Park. During the Lantern Festival,the park is literally an ocean of lanterns! Many new designs attract countless visitors. The most eye-catching lantern is th

Dragon Pole, This is a lantern in the shape of a golden dragon, spiraling up a 27-meter -high pole, spewing fireworks from its mouth. It is quite an impressive sight!Besides entertainment and beautiful lanterns, another important part of the Lantern Festival,or Yuanxiao Festival is eating small dumpling balls made of glutinous rice flour. We call these balls Yuanxiao. Obviously, they get the name from the festival itself. It is said that the custom of eating Yuanxiao originated during the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the fourth centuty, then became popular during the Tang and Song periods.The fillings inside the dumplings or Yuanxiao are either sweet or salty. Sweet fillings are made of sugar, Walnuts, sesame, osmanthus flowers, rose petals, sweetened tangerine peel, bean paste, or jujube paste. A single ingredient or any combination can be used as the filling . The salty variety is filled with minced meat, vegetables or a mixture.The way to make Yuanxiao also varies between northern and southern China. The usual method followed in southern provinceds is to shape the dough of rice flour into balls, make a hole, insert the filling, then close the hole and smooth out the dumpling by rolling it between your hands.In North China,sweeet or nonmeat stuffing is the usual ingredient. The fillings are pressed into hardened cores, dipped lightly in water and rolled in a flat basket containing dry glutinous rice flour. A layer of the flour sticks to the filling, which is then again dipped in water and rolled a second time in the rice flour. And so it goes, like rolling a snowball, until the dumpling is the desired size.The custom of eating Yuanxiao dumplings remains. This tradition encourages both old and new stores to promote their Yuanxiao products. They all try their best to improve the taste and quality of the dumplings to attract more customers.

China Festivals...

Adventure Tour to South Africa

South Africa is surrounded side by side by breathtaking mountains. South Africa offers world-class climbing, surfing, diving, hiking, horseback safaris, mountain biking, river rafting etc. There are over a hundred listed paragliding or hang gliding launch sites were you can enjoy.Thousands of kilometres of hiking trails around the country in desert, forest,you can see. South Africa is the most scenic and beautiful place for tourists to participate in adventure activities.South Africa offers a large variety of adventure activities,sports etc.On the border of the Eastern and Western Cape has the highest commercial bungee jump in the world. South Africa is home of the highest bungi jump, biggest sand dunes and tallest mountain.

Some of the famous adventure activities are :-

Abseiling table mountain - The world famous Table Mountain soars above Cape Town at 1000 metres above sea level. The "long drop" is 112m high - and about a kilometre above the city - making it the world's highest commercial abseil. The views from here are breathtaking.

Bungee jumping - The highest commercial Bungy Jump in the world stands at 216m high and is at the Bloukrans Bridge up the Garden Route of South Africa.

Canoeing, rafting & kayaking - The most popular is the Orange,it's a long, green-fringed oasis running through the mountainous desert area. Incredibly scenic, it also has a few fun rapids.The trail of approximately 75km is suitable for the complete novice and specially designed, stable, 2-man, Indian-type canoes makes it safe for the whole family, both young and old. There is some fun canoeing in the lakes area of the Garden Route, especially Wilderness and Knysna Lagoon.

Fishing - Shore angling is the most popular form of fishing - perhaps because it is the most accessible.

Horseback safaris – If you're comfortable on a horse you can take a ride through magnificent mountain scenery and also through vineyards.

Kloofing - Jumps range from 3 meters high to 22 meters high and it might seem crazy but it will give you an xtreme adventure xperience.

Rock climbing - South Africa offers some of the best, and most diverse, rock climbing in the world. Outside Durban, there are also a lot of sport climbs. The Cedarberg, two-and-a-half hours drive north of Cape Town, is a world-class bouldering area - and boasts some of the best rock climbing routes in the country.Cape Town is built around Table Mountain, a national park consisting of two great, hard rock types - Table Mountain sandstone, and Cape granite, which offers fantastic friction climbing.

Scuba diving - South Africa has an enormously long coastline, which isn't quite within the usual range for tropical diving. Mozambique Current flows down our east coast and at Sodwana Bay we have the most southerly coral reefs in the world.You can see pretty colourful fish and some great nudibranchs, including the outrageous Spanish dancer. Whale sharks, turtles, dolphins and ragged tooth sharks are often seen in specific areas.

Whale Watching - During the correct seasons, Southern Right Whales make the coastline their home and often come here to give birth. Hermanus, a beautiful fishing village up the coast from Cape Town, is a destination for some of the world's best land based and boat whale watching.