Keysy

Hello friends and family On the eve of my departure back to Australia, I thought I would celebrate the most fantastic 6 months of my life with an awards ceremony in the wonderful basement of the Cyberclan Internet Cafe on Nathan Rd, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Complementary lychee juice is available from your friendly and overworked cyberclan employees for only HK$5. Firstly i would like to thank you all for tuning in, deleting or taking part in the Adventures of Keysy in China over the past 6 months. It has been memorable, educational, eye opening and always extremely good fun. The first category of awards is sponsored by our good friends at Liquan Brewries, Guilin, China. They recognise the fun times and people that make the nights great and the mornings ugly. Best Drunken Injury Award Ander ... read more

After a few days recovery from the craziest Christmas I'd ever had, I was off to Shanghai to meet up with my girlfriend Ali (or Jia Jia as she is better known here) who was nice enough to spend her 3-week break from work to come over and visit. Lucky me have rich foreigner girlfriend, so we checked into the New Asia Hotel for 5 days of temperature control heating, great water pressure, continuous hot water and king sized luxury over the New Year period. HEAVEN! We picked a great time to come to Shanghai, the first night there it snowed, apparently something of a rarity there. Having lived in Shanghai during her younger years and with perfect language skills, I was counting on Ali to play tour guide while in Shanghai. Things change quickly in ... read more

The day after the Yangshuo Basketball tournament fiasco, I moved straight into my job for the following 3 weeks, Acting Manager of Chinaclimb while Mike went back to Canada for a holiday. Yangshuo is rapidly becoming renowned around the globe for its world class climbing. The endless amount of quality limestone mixed in with the laid back affordable lifestyle of West Street has made this southern Chinese destination a 'must do' in the travelling rockclimber's itinerary. Rockclimbing is the reason I first discovered Yangshuo on my 2003 trip to China, but it was the good friends and good times that I made the decisio... read more

Ni Hao! Well I'm now about half way through my Chinese odyssey. It has been a fantastic 3 months where I have learnt a hell of a lot and met some amazing people from all over the world. For the past month I’ve been hanging out, occasionally climbing or guiding with chinaclimb, but more often just taking it easy, here in my home away from home in Yangshuo. In the evening I have been going down to the local hospital which has a basketball court out the front. From about 5pm until it gets too dark (or when its time for dinner to be served), all the best basketballers in town meet up and go at it, old school 5on5 half court, first to 7, winner plays on - jungle ball style. They have all made ... read more

Greetings from the northern port city of Dalian, Liaoning province. Gotta love an internet cafe that serves longneck beer for Y2.5 (40c) so for any indescretions that may follow ill blame on the Lowen beer company, Dalian, China. Much water has passed under the 400 year old Dragon Bridge since i last wrote so ill breifly recap on my movements...ok maybe not too brief but ill try... From Lijiang i flew back to the urban metropolis of Guangzhou to meet my basketball teammates for the next 10 days. Spent 6 hours in the awesome new super-airport, met the boys and was really impressed with the turnout coach Warrick "Wazza" Giddey had put together. First impressions though can often be wrong. Rather than labour on about every city we visited, ill just sum up to say it ... read more

Hello once again from the beautiful town of Lijiang in Yunnan province. I've now been here in China for over four weeks and I'm happy to say that I now: - No longer get offended when someone hucks up a big loogie and spits it out in front of me; - am able to sit in the squat position for 5 minutes without pain; - quite enjoy sitting down to a breakfast of spicy noodle Soup with fatty meaty bits on top, aka Guilin mifan; - have worked out what people are yelling at me when I walk down the street..."Liang mi gao!" (2 meters!) and - am starting to think that the muddy water taste of cheap chinese beer is actually not that bad... I hear that all you good folk back in Australia had ... read more