Since leaving the university i have found Shanghai to be less exciting than i imagined! Don't get me wrong, I have been having fun and amusing myself, but the general drone of the city, the continual noise, the continual prescence of people without a moment to yourself; its starting to become quite draining now. On Saturday i gained my baerings of the waterfront (the bund) and the main shopping road (nanjing road) and people's square (the park that marks the city centre), and i moved into my new hostel. The captains hostel is quite nice and clean and smart, and it [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hello! Today marks the beginning of my holiday! I am done with my uni work (well, mostly), and i intend to enjoy the next two weeks! The past couple of days has included some interesting cultural experiences. Firstly, there has been a typhoon! Shanghai caught the tail end of it resulting in lots of rain and wind, and i feared that it might last for days! But yesterday it suddenly cleared and for the first time the sun has come out properly! Thursday evening marked Philip's (my tutors) last night in Shanghai and we were taken for a wonderful meal of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sunday was spent on Chongming Island. We were picked up by two students, a girl called Wah-mai, and a boy who I shall call Cho because I never did get the hang of his name!! We traveled over to Chongming Island via a ferry boat from a northern part of Shanghai. Chongming Island is advertised as being an eco-island and has a huge ramsar sight (which means it is very important for migrating birds), we were there to observe and study the area which has had considerable interest from developers. From a work point of view it was very exciting, [View Full Entry]

---

---

It has been a busy few days, full of culture, ecology, new friends and Chinese food (I would kill for a margharita pizza and garlic bread from captain tony’s pizza place in Wallasey!). Anyway, I shall start at the beginning… after leaving you with a first impression of Shanghai on Saturday, a lovely student called Ching took us out for the day. Bless the lad, he didn’t speak particularly good English, he wasn’t very well organised and he had been lumbered with two jet lagged English people! Anyway, he took us to People’s Park and to the Shanghai museum which [View Full Entry]

---

---

I've arrived! It only took a car trip, two flights, a stop over in Frankfurt, a que through Chinese immigration, and another car trip, and i got to East China Normal University! My first impressions have been pretty good; as we drove from the airport we passed tree lined boulevards and pretty chinese suburbs, and then as we rouned a bend the main city just seemed to emerge out of the rain and mist, and the buildings suddenly started growing taller and taller! Massive blocks of apartments lined the highway as we headed further into town, the traffic became hectic, as [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, here i am sitting in my office in Manchester (Salford), gazing out of the window at the new 'tall building' that marks the centre of the city, and contemplating the adventure that awaits me next week! Whilst the sites and smells of Manchester and Liverpool do hold much sway and charm in my heart, to me there is always a new place to explore in the world. Yes boys and girls, I'm off again, to China this time! I'm going to be staying and working at East China Normal University (Shanghai) for ten days, and then I'll be let loose [View Full Entry]

---

---

So, here I am back on my home soil. I spent all day yesterday travelling, I had the hassle of paying ‘safety fees’ at Dar Es Salaam when I had no money, I had to wait at Heathrow for 4 hours, and then BA lost my luggage somewhere. To be honest, I think I coped quite well with all that, but I had great difficulty trying to choose a chocolate bar at Heathrow, so much so that I gave up in the end! Who’d of thought I would get culture shock in my own country?! I felt so disorientated at [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Friday I headed back to Tanga, spent a few hours there getting the last of my stuff together and visiting Sarah who has been really ill in hospital with malaria. Then I flew out to Pemba where I met up with Charlotte at Swahili Divers. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t even intend to go to Pemba, but I couldn’t get a flight to Zanzibar straight away so I thought I’d spend a couple of days on Pemba before heading onwards. It was a good choice however, Pemba is spectacular! The place I was staying, Swahili Divers, was really [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Monday I caught the Scandinavian bus up to Mombassa, to meet up with a friend from university. It’s not far geographically, but Kenya and Tanzania are quite different. Kenya is more developed, has more traffic, more hustle and bustle, and more rules and regulations. Although the people are just as friendly. I stayed with my friend Kizito and his friend Millie in a suburb called Mikandani, and on my first night I was only good for sleeping! On the Tuesday we went to a place called Fort Jesus, it’s a big place with lots of history, having been used [View Full Entry]

---

---

My final few days in Tanga were a mixture of happiness and sadness. There was lots to be doing; conservation, shopping, eating, drinking and hanging out. We had a couple of really nice meals, one with the whole group of volunteers and one with my Usagara hostel ‘family’. I said goodbye to my project and left everything in the safe (?!) hands of Martin, Kanuni, and Rhema. And I said farewell to a lot of friends who have become like family to me. My initial scepticism about Tanga I now put down to culture shock; I love Tanga! It is [View Full Entry]

---

---