Thursday 17th June –Sokcho – Seoul Our first task was to find an Internet café so we could print out our Russian invitation letters to take them with us to the embassy tomorrow. We managed to find an Internet place with a printer and printed off some copies, so that was easy for once. We than went for a walk around Itaewon, there are yanks everywhere, and lots blacks as well, who aren’t soldiers, with their “rap” clothes and beaded hair. Naturally everyone thinks we are Americans too. You can use both Korean won and USD everywhere including the McDonalds. For tea, we had hot dogs and then wandered back to our hotel, avoiding the hookers, Tony is not allowed out by himself!! Friday 18th ... read more

Tuesday 1st June – Nagasaki I am still not feeling 100% although my eyes seem much better but we have decided to stay in Nagasaki to give me more time to recover, our intention was to move on today. We had a Japanese style breakfast in a bento box, fish, fruit, rice and miso soup, it was very nice although we didn’t know what everything in the box was. Quite different but I wouldn’t like to eat it every day. After breakfast, we purchased a tram pass from the information centre in the bus station Y500 ($6) which gives us unlimited tram rides for the whole day. Our first stop, of course, was the Atomic Bomb Hypocentre, the exact spot where the atom bomb exploded on 9th August 1945 at 1102am, there is a memorial park ... read more

Wednesday 19th May – Taipei – Hualien Our train leaves Taipei at 1030am, so we arrived at the station at 915am to ensure we didn’t miss our train. The scenery on this three-hour journey was lovely, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and Taiwan’s mountainous interior on the other. We arrived at Hualien just before 2pm and were whisked away by a very happy taxi driver, who took us to the Dashhin Hotel for NT105 ($5). The hotel is fine, we have a double bed and a multi coloured bath that looks like it is made of a thousand guitar plectrums. It cost NT600 ($25) a night and has a small menagerie consisting of three cats and one yappy dog. After checking in we went to the Hualien Travel Service to arrange a tour for ... read more

Saturday May 1st Lhasa – Chengdu I woke early as the taxi to the airport is coming at 730am. It was another restless night’s sleep for me, I woke in the wee hours and had trouble breathing, nose all stuffed up I look forward to our return to a lower altitude and fewer red corpuscles! The taxi arrived at 715am but we were ready, Tony was concerned as there were two men were in the taxi, one of the golden rules of travelling is to never get in a cab with someone other than the driver, as the hotel had arranged this cab, we hoped it would be okay. It turned out fine, especially as the other guy slept all the way. It was a beautiful morning in Tibet, blue skies everywhere that seemed to bounce ... read more

We left the hotel at 930am for the three minute walk to the train station, finding the correct waiting room crowds of commuters are smaller than in the larger Chinese cities. We boarded the train just before 10am after walking straight to the front of the queue and passing through the entrance gate first, it was then a matter of finding our carriage on what is quite a long train, there were at least 16 double story carriages. We have purchased hard seat tickets costing Y73($16) for this seven hour section of our journey and the upright seats are in fact very hard and uncomfortable and the carriage is cramped and full of sick people. The boy opposite me is snorting & snuffling and not putting his hand over his mouth when he coughs he is ... read more