moonfish

An 11 hour overnight coach journey brought us to our next destination, Airlie beach, where we were to board our fabulous Sailing Yacht - Matador. Matador was a racing yacht, and during her time she was unbeaten. Now a party boat for sailing round the Whit Sunday Islands, she was our home for 3 days of fabulous sunshine, snorkelling, diving and general frolicking in the water, unfortunately not much sailing as there was not much wind, so during motoring time we lounged around on the deck, most people topping up the tan, but for me it was more a case of reflecting the rays and looking incredibly pale in comparison to my crew mates! Unfortunately I had to be pretty careful with the amount of photos I took as my battery was running low, but I ... read more

Was so worried that I wouldn't make it to Longji because of my foot, but having had 4 days of rest, without too much walking I had no problems that a couple of painkillers couldn't fix, there was no way I was going to miss trekking through the rice terraces, it was the bit that I had been looking forward to the most of the whole trip. The day started with a 4 hour bus ride to Longji after we had dropped our luggage at the train station storage room with just our day packs and enough clothes to see us through 2 days - this being underwear and evening clothes, no need for a change of day clothes, we could all smell together whilst hiking! The journey was surprisingly comfortable, we had a private bus, ... read more

WOW! Shanghai is hot! Step out of the air conditioning and within 2 minutes you're sweating. Its unbelievable. Even at 6am on the Bund (The old road that runs along the river) watching the tai-chi. I have no idea what the temperature was, all I know is hot and humid is an understatement. The strange thing about Shanghai is its European appearance. The architecture here is completely different to that anywhere else I have seen in China. Even to the point you can see the influence of different countries within the districts. Unfortunately didn't get much sightseeing done as managed to injure my foot and was having difficulty walking. So alot of my time was spent resting and hobbling around. I did manage to get to the Jade Buddha Temple, which was an incredibly tranquil place ... read more

Wow! What an amazing day. Beautiful blue sky and gorgeous sunshine, with just a little bit of a breeze. Our group leader said she has never visited the Great Wall on a better day. There are lots of different parts to the wall, some of which you can walk on, others you can't due to different reasons - too difficult to reach, bad condition and too dangerous. In total the wall is 6000km in length and started in 221bc under Emporer Qin. We walked Jinshanling and Simatai, built around 500 years ago with parts restored within the last 30 years. Other parts had not been restored and were crumbling, with steps missing, no ramparts in places and very uneven. The stretch we walked was 8km, took us 4 hours, not a particularly quick pace, but in ... read more

Its been an amazing few days. After leaving Lake Baikal we had another 2 nights on the train to get to Ulaan Baatar (UB). The border crossing into Mongolia took almost 10 hours, which was frustrating to say the least. We spent the first 4 hours just sat in the baking heat on the Russian side waiting for the officials to arrive, and when they did they were unsmiling, abrupt and very rude. The strange part was, as soon as we crossed into Mongolia people smiled, the officials were polite and asked nicely to look at our luggage and the whole process was much smoother. At 7.30 am, Sunday morning we drove to our hotel, being so quiet, you would never have known there had been rioting only days before and the country had been in ... read more