We had a great weekend! With Mel and Renee we walked to one of the smaller villages nearby before catching the bus to Guangshui Town where we spent a few very enjoyable hours. The little village was so interesting. It had small family sawmills and many little one room noodle making 'factories'. The rooms all had narrow rollers through which the noodle dough was flattened and then it was cut and hung out to dry on wooden racks. The local blacksmith had the most marvellous face - I would love to take some close up photos of some of the older people! Hopefully I will get some eventually. We always ask permission to take photos with people in them and quite often they don't allow it. The village was very poor and we spent some time ... read more

Our day starts with us waking up around 6am with the sound of the students 'wake up music' in the background. This week they have started a summer programme which means that they all get up earlier and are now outside doing exercises at 6.15 instead of 6.40! We turn on the laptop and catch up with the morning headlines and have even started watching video excerpts of the local TV news. It's amazing what you can find to watch when you're desperate. We have no access to television news as the only English station on our TV is a 24 hours cable movie channel. There are also no English newspapers available at all in this part of China. We also download the headlines of Aussie newspapers every day. Breakfast consists of stewed apples and muesli. ... read more

Jerry and I left Australia at midnight with heavy suitcases and a feeling of "have we done the right thing?" Arriving in Shanghai we were met at the airport by a an English speaking guide who drove us an hour to our hotel - the 'Yangtze' (can highly reccommend it). It was freezing cold and raining. The hotel was an original art deco hotel and was situated very close to the Shanghai museum and Nanjing Lu (St), which is a pedestrian shopping mall which stretches to The Bund, the famous waterfront concessional area which was Shanghai's Wall Street in the 1930's. We spent three nights wandering the streets around our hotel and dodging rain showers. On the eve of Chinese New Year all night you could hear fire crackers go off - it was totally crazy ... read more

At the moment we are in Kota Bahru at the top of the eastern side of Malaysia. Tomorrow we cross the border into Thailand but at this stage am unsure as to whether we stay in the region for a few days or just keep heading north to Bangkok. We can’t get any information on the train timetables until we actually arrive in Thailand. We’ve booked a taxi to drive us the one hour north and drop us off at the border immigration office, where we then have to walk the kilometre between the two border posts and onward to the train station. We loved our time in Kuala Terengganu - the city had a strong Islamic influence and we seemed to be the only tourists there. We spent 2 days and nights there - we ... read more

I’m writing this in a little café in Jerentut in Central Malaysia, whilst waiting for a bus to take us to Kuantan on the east coast of the country. We arrived in Jerentut after five hours on the Jungle Railway from KL. We travelled 2nd class - it was clean, comfortable and a/c. The train was very busy as it is now school holidays here. Jerentut is a quiet little village, though we discovered the main part of the town (much bigger) when we climbed up the hill behind us. We are actually in the old part - the newer part is higher and set amongst trees so hard to see from here. We spent the night in a small hotel, paying only $16 for the room. After wandering around the village we located a laundry ... read more