Pete Tupper

Spending 2 hours sitting in a bath with a Russian girl in a bikini, letting people come round and take photos was not the worst way to earn quite a lot of money one Saturday afternoon. I hope the Dracular scar on my collar bone didn't stop them selling any baths.... read more

I have actually been at university all this time, not only going on adventures! This blog will look at what it's like to be a Chinese student in both it's meanings: Firstly, what it is like to study Chinese, and secondly what is it like to be Chinese and study. Both are not particularly photogenic but hopefully interesting for those who aren't studying or being Chinese. Chinese takes about three times as long to learn as European languages, because there is almost nothing about it that is similar. Those funny little characters represent roughly one word (or basic meaning) each, although many words are made of two or three, and there are no spaces separating where one word begins and one ends. In total there are 50,000 characters that can be learned, each one unique, although ... read more

I am proud to say I took 1st place in 50m Freestyle at the annual university competition, which was open to any of Hainan University's 30,000 students. I also came 2nd in 50m backstroke and 1st as part of the 4x50m relay, all of which was part of an overall win by the Foreigner's team, as it was also a competition between the various departments of the university. This might sound OK, but let's put it in perspective. I saw one Chinese man almost drown while flapping around in the water trying to save his friend who was even closer to drowning. I saw a teacher take 15 painstaking minutes to complete four lengths while I was waiting for my heat, with my feat scorching on the start post from the midday sun. I saw a ... read more

Some hilarious videos of monkeys and a few photos of Hainan's famous Monkey Island. We took a cable car over the rainforest to reach the area, and afterwards took a moped to a deserted beach, followed by a boat ride home through a village entirely floating on water.... read more

As you can see from the picture, the scenery on the way up and from the top of Hainan’s highest mountain, Wuzhishan, is pretty amazing. There is just one thin path (of sorts) cutting through the rainforest from the bottom to the 1800m peak, which took us about four hours of steady hiking and climbing. This is harder work than it sounds, as the mountain gets steeper and steeper until you are literally climbing on all fours up tree roots like ladders. The very peak is just a small clearing about the size of a bedroom, with steep drops on all four sides, and there is a very strange feeling up there. For one, you are just slightly above the clouds, which feels a bit like being in a very small heaven as you can’t see ... read more