Its supposedly one of those unique cities in the world, up there with New York and Paris. Why? Cos its so darned busy and crowded. But yes, it does have something special - watches - lots of cheap watches!! The day started out fantastically with a FREE BUSINESS CLASS flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong. How did we get this free, and why was it business class. Well, let me teach you a lesson in not letting anything go to waste. You see, in 2003 when Melenie and I flew to London, we went on Japan Airlines. And we had the [View Full Entry]

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Shanghai is known as the most vibrant, most fast-paced and most western city in China, and it certainly shows. The city goes on for miles and there are skyscrapers everywhere. Its apparently fast catching up with Hong Kong and the Chinese government is hoping that in 10 years it will be a bigger and better business centre than Hong Kong itself. Its one of those cities that you experience rather than tour, because there really ain't much to see apart from the culture. Possibly the thing we will remember the most of Shanghai though is the bed. Yup, the hotel we [View Full Entry]

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Only one word to describe what we did today. Shopping!! Melenie could no longer resist the temptations of the cheap cheap clothes out here, so off she was spending like a mad woman. I must hand it to her though - she was quite controlled and only walked away with 3 items. But that was after many hours of trying lots of outfits. The worst part is when we went to pay, we discovered that our credit card wouldn't work in the shop's machine. We only had a little bit of cash, so we had to give almost all our cash [View Full Entry]

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If you've never heard of the Shaolin monks then shame on you. They were the guys who invented Kung Fu and now travel the world doing shows and charging lots of money. A humble lot as you can guess. Well today we headed off on a bus tour to see the Shaolin monks as well as a number of other local attractions. We foolishly booked ourselves on a local chinese speaking tour and thus had to endure 2 hours of this really LOUD chinese lady screeching about every second building that we passed. But we kept ourselves entertained by trying to [View Full Entry]

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Rule number one. Husbands - do NOT let your wife enter the clothes shops in Beijing. Why? Because stuff is incredibly cheap. Thus, once they enter, you're in for a day of wandering the streets stopping in every shop, and watching your wallet get thinner and thinner as the day goes on. You can guess what we did today. Shop shop shop!! It started out with good intentions - we had to get some presents to take back for our families. Alas, it turned into a major shopping spree, and we ended up with so many shopping bags that we had [View Full Entry]

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These were apparently the words of Ronald Regan - a man of immense depth as described by his insightful statement. Yes, today we went to see the most famous sight in China, the famous Great Wall. Unfortunately, we booked ourselves onto a non-English speaking, all Chinese speaking tour. However, how much commentary does one really need regarding a big wall - right? Wrong. About 20 minutes into the bus trip, the chinese tour dragon lady walked up to us and asked for 40 Yuan extra. We had both been looking out the window before, so we hadn't noticed that she had [View Full Entry]

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Beijing is a modern bustling western city yet strangely very chinese at the same time. Along the main streets, you'll see women sporting the latest western fashions driving the latest sports cars, while in the side streets you'll see sweaty richshaw drivers dragging fat chinese business men around. In the temples, you'll see young girls in mid-rif tops prostrating and bowing before a big buddha statue beside a bald monk dressed in long flowing robes. Its interesting just to wander the streets and watch the people. And if you do decided to watch them, then make sure you really really stare [View Full Entry]

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Today, we didn't want to leave to hotel. Why? Because for some reason, we were in a 4-star hotel that we'd managed to book at a very good rate. So we finally managed to drag ourselves out by 9:30 and headed over to the major attraction of Xi'an - the terracotta warriors. The bus journey took 45 minutes, and we were entertained on the way by a talkative old french man who had travelled the world. The guy was apparently now retired but had a small business in paris that he ran 3 out of 4 weeks a month. He spent [View Full Entry]

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Today was Melenie's most favourite day of the holiday - the day we visited the giant pandas. There are apparently on about 300 of the guys left in the world, and the Giant Panda breeding centre is one of the few places in the world where you see them in a nice open reserve chomping on bamboo (as opposed to the tiny metal cages that they are confined to in many chinese zoos). We made an early morning excursion to the panda centre, which is about a 40 minute drive from central Chengdu. I was a bit dubious, because we spent [View Full Entry]

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Today, we decided to make a day trip out to Leshan, a town about 2 hours from Chengdu known for only one thing - the worlds biggest monolithic Buddha (ie. Buddha carved out of one piece of rock). The bus trip to Leshan was boring and uneventful, although we did get an occassional glimpse of some pretty chinese country side. Sichuan is very green, and we're sure we'll remember the images of green for the many years to come. Dismounting from the bus, we discovered that we'd been brought to a big Buddha reserve. Here, we would have the opportunity to [View Full Entry]

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