Well it was raining too hard on the night of the Opening ceremony so we didn't head down to the square. We just grabbed beers and watch the telecast in one of the hotel rooms. Luckily we had our Chinese Guide there as our interpretation of events didn't resemble the reality. It was a good night - very impressed with the drummers.... not so impressed with the puppets and the Australian's marching out outfit! We heard that someone was quite badly injured at the final rehearsal for the opening ... but couldn't really work out where that would have been (our guesses about Terracotta Warriors and juggling Pandas didn't eventuate!) The next morning we headed out early. We were free camping on the way to the most western part of the Great Wall. We stopped at ... read more

We headed out of Xian yesterday. really ready to get on the road. Xian is a nice city and all geared up for the Olympics but I was ready to see what was around the next corner. We loaded up the truck and started out with the aim of reaching Pingliang around 10 hrs later. (It was 300km.) The plan was to visit a big buddha along the way. About half an hour into the journey we hit the first section of a day long truck jam. There seemed to be no real reason for the road of trucks - watermelons, donkeys, chickens, goats - but the truck crawl lasted for around 4hrs. Trucks cutting in and then just stopping. The 10 hrs turned into a 14hrs journey. We reached Pingliang around 9pm and basically ... read more

Well with the adventure underway, I rubbed shoulders with the Australian Basketball Team (well almost ... they were boarding a Qantas flight for Hong Kong on Sunday night as well) but more out of control was the group coming back from the Herbalife Extravaganza on my flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong! I think that I was the only one without a green silky herbalife jacket, I love Herbalife hat or badge! Watching them go about their frenzy with the plane food ... I don't think I will be asking them how to loose weght any time soon. I was in several Herbalife photos ...in hindsight I wish I had taken a photo myself ...it was so crazy. Hong Kong was great. It ws bit of shock to the system to hit the 26 degrees and ... read more