Forrest Gump famously said that his mother told him life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. The same can be said of Chinese toilets. Once you get your head around the fact that the majority of Chinese toilet visits are not going to be a pleasant experience, it becomes a bit of an adventure. Just HOW bad is the toilet that the bus stops at on the side of a highway at 4am in the morning ACTUALLY going to be? Approached with a large sense of trepidation, a lungful of air from outside, clutching [View Full Entry]

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It’s difficult to talk about the environment in China and not feel completely worried about how on earth anyone could possibly sort this mess out. What stands out the most to the outside observer is that the land, this country, is here for the benefit of man. It’s as simple as that, or so it would seem. The Chinese have been shaping and controlling the environment here, in often ingenious and creative ways, for eons, but nonetheless it has been bent and buckled and stretched and swamped, drained and flooded, mined and filled in, and we only need to see Michael [View Full Entry]

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It is Tuesday September 1st and I have spent the afternoon ambling through the gardens of the Temple of Heaven. Sound heavenly? It was. And for the first time since I can remember, I smelt the smell of newly cut grass, and it made me happy, and it made me think of home. I have spent today (after arriving at 6am) walking around the 2 places I didn't get to visit before; namely the Lama Temple and the Temple of Heaven. Both were nice, but these Chinese eyes are tired and I'm focused on leaving these shores now. So I have [View Full Entry]

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My 5 hour bus ride to Chongqing was very uneventful. I had the usual Chinese stares from everyone else on the bus who look at you at first presumably thinking you got on by mistake, but when it becomes evident you’re staying, they forget about you and you become accepted into the circle. So the journey went, and the familiar ache in my neck let me know that at some point I had fallen asleep against the window. I had a mild feeling of panic about halfway when it occurred to me that no one had told me what to do [View Full Entry]

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I was thinking, as I was mulling ideas over in my head searching for inspiration, that as I had only been here in Chengdu for 3 days, I wouldn’t really have much to write home about...but looking through my little note book (every good writer has one I’m told), there’s a fair whack. So settle yourselves... First things first, we have a couple of housekeeping issues to address. I hope you have all caught your breath from the TLG episode. I have received a couple of complaints from my mother about the recklessness of my adventures, and so I apologise to [View Full Entry]

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Blog 12: Highway Robbery, High Walks and High Hopes. If there’s one thing you can say about Kunming, is that it smells nice when it rains. It truly does. I have now been on a train for 26 hours. I think that’s plenty of time to be on a train, so Richard Branson, if you’re reading this, I would like a special card please that I can use when I’m on trains in the UK. If they get delayed, I can use it to get flown out by private helicopter, because quite frankly, then it comes to train travel, I’ve done [View Full Entry]

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Blog 11: Death defying feats and tremendous acts of heroism!* After a very long trip on a bus, which went overnight, had no toilet and involved a random midnight stop for a bowl of rice in a restaurant (don't ask, I have NO idea...), I got to Hong Kong, they let me out of China and into Hong Kong. It felt nice to be back. I got to my hostel where I had treated myself to my VERY OWN room for the night. Well. It claimed to be a room. It was a bed, with a door. My suitcase had to [View Full Entry]

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Blog 10: It's just a few steps....and then there were angels. Well I'm telling you, it isn't. Not by any stretch of the imagination is it just a few steps. Huang Shan. Or Yellow Mountain if you prefer. FMG. Seven days ago, I undertook to go up Huang Shan. This is what happened... I got up early as you know dear reader, I had 6 hours and 3 buses to catch. Well I was happily on my way on the bus to the mountain armed with the knowledge there were shuttle buses taking you from the town Tankou to the base [View Full Entry]

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Blog 9: Rockets, refugees, birthdays, eclipses and lakes. Wow. What a lot of things to cover. I best start off in my final days in Qingdao. After the robbery, I laid low for a day licking my wounds. It was ok. The weather was too hot and I had a bit of an upset tummy (on account of some unidentifed sea creature that came out of a shell but was neither mussel nor clam). Mind you, I have been here 6 months and this was my first instance of anything approaching "I really shouldn't have eaten that". Thank goodness that on [View Full Entry]

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Blog #8: July 7th - 14th: Shanghai, Qingdao and on being a victim of crime. Well dear readers...where have we got to? I left you in an internet cafe in Shanghai...so from there I will pick up my story. Tuesday 7th I cooked a meal for the 4 of us to say thanks for letting me stay at your flat. As I only had a 2 burner gas stove, the inside of a rice cooker and the smallest frying and saucepan in the world, I did quite well to muster up lime and garlic prawns with a kiwi fruit and lettuce [View Full Entry]

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