Back in Japan today at their lowest island which is along way south of the main Japanese islands. This island formed an important sea trading port during the early days of both European sailing mid 1500s onwards and also for the local countries of the time. The population is over 300,000 and it was flattened in WW11 when the allies drove upwards towards Japan. Apparently there are still US defence bases stationed at various places around the island. Okinawa is a nice island and very Japanese - by that I mean, after leaving China, order is back everywhere, nice roads, extra [View Full Entry]

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During the morning, Ross, AB and I entered the “tennis” competition. This involved playing side by side against someone else with a tennis ball attached to a long rubber band held to the ground by a sand bag. There was a trick to this, especially if the returning ball rubber band is stretched harder when the rubber band winds itself around the bag. I was caught out twice by a rapidly dropping ball from mid flight. We played up to five and I won against my Vancouver competitor earning $3 towards an end of trip T shirt or mug. After lunch, [View Full Entry]

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It was a nice day today, hazy to clear sky and about 20 degrees. We caught a taxi to the Shanghai Museum. It’s a nice new building with lots of marble however it’s an arts museum. It had quite old statues, old writings, water paintings and the history of money. The most interesting thing I thought, was the use of spade and arrow shaped coins a couple of thousand years ago and then the adoption of paper money commencing in the 10 century! We then walked around the Peoples Square with its immaculate lawns and white pigeons (no-one walks on the [View Full Entry]

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We woke to find the ship moored right in the town centre on the very wide, Huangpu river. We were surrounded on both sides of the river by skyscrapers and a large TV observation tower. As usual, the ship gave us a rudimentary map to get around with whilst onshore and a sheet of paper with the major attractions in Chinese words with corresponding English names. This last part is always helpful when we are stumped on the street and needing directions. We headed off to the old colonial business district only to find it under heavy reconstruction and the underpass [View Full Entry]

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At last we are back at sea and now for two days travelling from Beijing to Shanghai around the coast and thru the Yellow Sea. The sea here is almost that colour (in fact its the same colour as the Yarra) even 200 miles out to sea. This is caused by the Yangtze river draining its silt into the sea for hundreds of years. Let me tell about two nice people we met for breakfast. Bob & Barbara who now live in Alabama. Bob is in his early 80s and when he was 17, he was on one of the US [View Full Entry]

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We had to get up at 4.30am for the early start for the 3 hr bus drive into Beijing. Unlike yesterday, today was very sunny, with blue skies and a nice 20 degrees. First stop was at Tiananmen Square. It’s big wide and open about 800m x 500m that attracts about 1M visitors per day. The parliament faces the square on one side and handles some 10,000 visitors and it sits once a month. Ex chairman Mao the winning general of the 20th century civil war has his painting at the north end building which is where the big chiefs oversee [View Full Entry]

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We woke this morning in the port suburb of Tianjin under murky skies - fog/smog. After waiting for about 1½ hrs for local customs clearance, we started on the 3 hr bus trip to Beijing and the Great Wall. The traffic to Beijing was so bad we had lunch before we got to the wall. The Chinese banquet lunch was jummy! About 3.00pm we reached the wall at Juyaugan which apparently is one of four places that tours use for seeing the Great Wall. It wasn’t what I thought is was going to be - it’s a very steep hill of [View Full Entry]

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Before we begin here, we were informed that all of China is on the one time zone which is unusual as the country appears to have at least 2 ½ hours time span but in Beijing they do what they want. Now Dalian is BIG and I had never heard of it until I saw it on the list of ports of call. I suspect that pollution is a bit of an issue and the sky is hazy and only blue overhead. The city is enormous; the high rise buildings are very tall and interesting; maybe spectacular it’s a better word [View Full Entry]

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A different day today, meeting people, walking the deck, resting, eating and dancing and I snuck in a small sleep after lunch). After breakfast we did some deck walking to get up the steps. AB did a walk as well. We all went in the Boce competition and collected some more $s vouchers (Mum won two!). The ship's gives out dollar rewards for enterng and winning various on board events - the more you win the more dollars you have at the end to redeem towards a free T shirt or cap etc. We met diffrent American couples for lunch and [View Full Entry]

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We woke this morning in Pusan in South Korea. The city has 4Mil people and is spread right around the harbours (they have couple of them). It’s obviously a major seaport because the fish market was so vast. In the market freshly caught fish were displayed next to live fish in tanks - all sorts - the area was spread over quite a few acres. It was clean there but not so nice unless of course you don’t mind seeing live fish everywhere. We moved up the road to the “International Market” which was mostly in a concoction of crowded laneways [View Full Entry]

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