JenThor

Arrived back in Beijing again, this time to see more of the sights than the hospitals...... On our first day back we went to the outskirts of the city to explore the Summer Palace which was where the imperial court used to retreat to in the summer to escape the heat of the city. It was in a lovely setting, surrounded by hills and had an enormous lake in the middle. We spent a relaxing day by the lake, feeding the birds and enjoying ice cream and the relative coolness. Unfortunately in the taxi on the way back we discovered our camera had deserted us (we think probably stolen sadly) so we lost all the photos of the palace grounds.....luckily all the rest of our photos had been safely downloaded onto the laptop so we didn't ... read more

After seeing the doc again, who was pleased that things were improving, we managed to get tickets on to Xian, which is best known as the home of the Terracotta Warriors. In the past, Xian was the Eastern terminal for the camel caravans laiden with trade goods travelling along the Silk Road, (which linked China to Turkey and Rome) and was also China’s capital during the Tang dynasty so was a very important city. We didn’t really know what to expect of this city today but found it was one of our favourite places so far. We arrived and relaxed a bit before heading off to explore. Wandering towards the centre was lovely, we weren’t attacked by touts at all and we enjoyed watching city life around us, we even went into a local market and ... read more

Arrived in Guilin after a surprisingly good 28h train journey - the trains here move a lot faster than the Transsiberian and are a lot less bumpy! Guilin is in the South of China and the scenery is probably well known to most people from the typical Chinese scroll paintings - soaring limestone peaks of all shapes and sizes covered in trees, rice paddies, people working the fields with water buffalo and the beautiful Li River winding through it all. The weather here is jungle like - incredibly hot and intensely humid (so much so there's a constant thick haze in the air) with powerful tropical downpours every few hours - it feels like you are in a wet sauna continually, but most things are air conditioned inside so we’re doing OK... We took a tour ... read more

Sorry for the lack of entries recently......we just wanted to post a quick update to let you know we're still alive and then we'll post properly tommorrow. Well - things with Jen's eyes got worse unfortunately and her vision became really poor in both eyes....we were forced to go back to the hospital and this time got to see a lovely female professor. Things started badly when Jen couldn't read below the top letter on the vision board even with her glasses and then Dr Wei proceeded to terrify us by sucking in her breath and saying 'oh my god' when looking at Jen's eyes through the slit lamp - very comforting! Apparently Jen had now developed bad swelling of the cornea in both eyes which the doctor felt was due to a viral infection that ... read more

We decided to take it easy for our last day in Ulaan Bataar as we were both a bit shattered from the bouncy driving and the weather was scorching! After a nice lie in we headed off to see Gandan Khiid, the biggest and most important monastery in Mongolia. Apparently the communists decided not to destroy it along with most of the others as they wanted to keep it as a showcase to impress foreign visitors. The monastery was beautiful but packed with tourists. Inside the main temple there was a very impressive 25m high statue of Janraisig (deity of compassion we think!) made of copper and gilded with gold. The statue was enormous and we heard it contained many precious stones, medicinal herbs and even an entire furnished ger inside the base! The original statue ... read more