JohnA

Day 19, 20 at Sea Day 21. Shanghai. Shanghai, one of the oldest towns in the Yangtze River basin, is a city of 23 million people - about the population of Australia! We took a bus to the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute, the Humble Administrator's Garden and a canal boat ride. The roads were excellent and often elevated except that they had noise limiting walls along each side for much of the distance so sight seeing was limited. The intersections were spaghetti junctions. The airport is close to the city. Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute was fascinating, but no photography was allowed. The embroidery was so fine that the individual threads in a smooth gradation of colour could not be seen unless viewed from close to the work. The cheapest embroidery was one sided with knots on ... read more

Days 14 Sabah. We were welcomed by a dance group in traditional costume; the women danced and the men performed a war dance. Sabah, a member of Malaysia, is rich in timber, oil, natural gas and other resources and does not have extreme wind because it lies south of the typhoon belt. Children's education expenses are covered by the state. All that we saw of the city Kota Kinabalu was what we saw as we went directly from the ship to the Mt Kinabalu Park by bus to see the native flora. Mt Kinabalu is 4,100 metres high and the Park is at 1,560 metres above sea level. Our guide explained the medical applications of many of the plants. For example the old leaves of the bird's nest fern contain aspirin, extract from another plant was ... read more

Day 8. Darwin We went on a bus and catered boat tour to see some parts that we had not seen before. We had been to the aviation museum, but it was good to visit the B52 again, or it would have been if we had more than the 25 minutes available. I'm gald I am not under the B52 bomber in a war. Other war planes included a Spitfire and a Mirage - they are so small beside the B52. There were other commercial and experimental aircraft there too. A 2 hour cruise and meal on the Charles Darwin showed the city from the sea. The city has some beautiful buildings. There were dredges deepening the shipping channels. Days 9 to 12 at sea. The pattern of 2 lectures in the morning, one in the ... read more

Budapest The weather continued to be fairly hot and humid, building up to isolated thunder storms each evening. We passed through Bratislava where we had been the day before. Most of the recent bridges seem to be rather spectacular suspension bridges. The Chain Bridge in Budapest is a suspension bridge with a difference. Instead of using cables it uses chains made with long flat steel "links" bolted together. We have seen another chain bridge by the same designer in England. One novelty in Budapest that I must mention is the amphibious bus that takes passengers on 2 hour tours. We only saw it on the water and I have no other information. We had a bus tour that some main features and out to the museum of communist era statues. One moving display was the Holocaust ... read more

Vienna Our bus trip took us around the Ringstrasse that was built along the site of the city wall. Inside the Ringstrasse has heritage restrictions on what can be done, but outside doesn't. I don't remember a lot of what we saw because I had the dreaded lurgi (bad cold) that was going through the boat. We had been to Vienna before so I spent the afternoon in bed. But I did get the solution to a problem that had puzzled me since were there. I asked the guide what was the windowless cylindrical tower that we had seen before. She said an antiaircraft emplacement tower (Flakturm). They were meant to be near indestructible. The Viennese decided to get rid of them so they tried to blow one up. The broke 3,500 windows but only put ... read more