Team Wuxi is go!

Life after China!

2009-01-08T18:16:00.003+08:00

Yes yes, Team Wuxi is go! remains Team Wuxi is closed.....but, we have decided to start another project.

We spent too long in the country and both maintain such a vested interest(possibly even growing), that shelving our experience and filing it away as history is simply not an option. So without further ado.....We would like to present you with our new blog project:

Life after China.

Life after China details our continuing thoughts on how we feel about this ever-changing, very interesting country. Prior to our leaving, and possibly even moreso since our return, we were always keeping an eye on China. Through news articles, documentaries, travel literature, you name it, both of us could probably say it's the subject that most captures our attention.

Almost daily we come across articles or similar that has us cracking up over something Chinese. Something we have most likely seen ourselves or can relate to.

Our new blog will be a combination of our thoughts on random topics mostly relating to China and/or the Chinese. Occasionally we'll throw a 'we're doing this!' thing in there, but we're really not up to anything so interesting at the moment that journaling our own day to days is worth it.

So if you happen to see this post - feel free to stop over at Life after China and take a look!

cheers,
Marcus & Court!

-note - we've relocated to wordpress.com as it appears to be a much more fully featured blog platform that blogger is/was.

Team Wuxi is....closed! :( (Marcus)

2008-11-10T14:55:00.017+08:00

When we were clinging together in a bed so cold it was almost wet, wearing full tracksuits, jackets, socks and anything else that would fit, our breath clearly visible in the air, so completely upset we said to each other that in a blink of an eye we would be home and this would all be behind us. At that stage even two weeks there seemed like too much. Now? We have been back in Australia over a month and already our Chinese adventure feels like it happened a lifetime ago.

It’s hard to sum up everything that happened in just a few short paragraphs so I won’t – there is over 230 entries that talk about that! But I will say this – since returning from China we have felt different about our lives.

The whole point of going to China was to promote change. Change from working day in day out in jobs we didn’t care for. Change from our every day routines. Change to not only challenge but prove to ourselves that we could do it. And we did. While we came home earlier than anticipated it reached a point where we felt that we had achieved everything we set out to. We came home confident that it was time to return and get on with our real lives.

Our time in China felt like a timeout from ordinary life. It was like living in a cartoon, where no two days were the same and predicting what would happen at any given time was an impossibility. We wanted to immerse ourselves in another culture – one so completely different to our own that I don’t think either of us can still really comprehend just how out-there the place really is. In fact, I think even a life-time in China still wouldn’t help you as a foreigner to really understand what goes on inside the head of the average Chinese person.

We wanted to live overseas but somewhere different. We could have gone and worked in London (well actually I couldn’t as I am too old for a Visa now, but still...) we picked China as China looked so weird and wonderful. While it was definitely weird, and had large elements of wonderful, it was a very different place in reality than the China we saw on television. What we both expected to walk into – beautiful garden here, lovely pagoda there, oh and massages on every corner – was in fact mostly a fantasy(Well not with the massages, but most were ‘happy ending’ massage parlors…wink wink). The harsh reality of China was a country absolutely teeming with people, living in almost unbelievably bad air pollution where as a foreigner it was near on impossible to walk around with any degree of anonymity which in the end became a major factor for our decision to return home.

Since returning to Australia we have remarked here and there at how nice it was to have the convenience of English life again, but in reality, the things we were missing were really never that life changing. I will say that returning to a shower that works, a hot water tap in the kitchen, real bread and chicken paramagana’s however is absolute bliss.

One of the first things that really stood out when we walked off the plane in Melbourne was how absolutely crisp and in focus everything looked. Even on a clear day in China, it is still smoggy. There is absolutely no comparison between the air quality here and there.

We have yet to find work, but the whole spirit of change is kicking along nicely. We have the luxury now of targeting industries that we actually want to work in. While I have yet to make considerable progress, I know what I want to do. Courtney on the other hand, by way of a friend has almost landed into the exact type of position she was looking for. That alone made everything worth it.

This will be the last post we make to this blog and we close it with heavy heart. It started out as being just a fun type of project for us to keep in touch with friends and family back home, but it really did evolve into something more. Unexpectedly, it became a fantastic way to vent, to put down how we were feeling and really help us get past it. The early days were considerably difficult, and even though we had each other, I don’t think either of us has ever really felt truly as alone as we did back then. Being able to put it all in writing and share the experience with our loved ones really helped. And of course, now we have a great record of our entire adventure, one that we will never forget.

We had lots of fun writing it and hope you enjoyed reading it. We wanted to thank everyone for their support while we were away, and an extra special thank you to those who sent us ‘care packages.’ It was wonderful being able to brush our teeth with toothpaste that didn’t potentially contain chemical solvent, and I am sure Courtney appreciated the…female products, as well; a bag of cotton balls just wouldn’t suffice ;)

Below, like Courtney, I have selected a random bunch of photos that held different meaning for me. There were so many different themes that ran through the 8 months we were there, and these photos capture some of them.

But in all seriousness, we came home with wonderful memories, some brand new friends, box loads of memorabilia and a hunger to try something new. I hold a very special place inside for China. I still can’t believe we did what we did – particularly the scale of teaching we undertook. I miss having regular access to Shanghai, and sorely wish to return to Beijing for an extended holiday. We picked up enough of the language that we could(and did) comfortably travel anywhere in the country, and I am sure one day we will return.

The very first photo we took in China - a very tired yet positive Courtney on the dreary highway between Shanghai and Wuxi.

Our dear friends Matt & Abby!

Mr Pan and family, we miss him so much!

You're not likely to go fishing for goldfish anywhere other than China.

Magnificent Shanghai.

A view of my favourite building in Shanghai.

No Yak on a stick for you lil fella.

Beautiful Dali.

This was just ridiculously cute, I was utterly cuted out photographing them.

China is full of really cute children - something happens to them though as they age :)

Oh how i miss Grape-on-a-stick covered in toffee.

I didn't expect to be overly impressed by the Great Wall - but I truly was.

Getting tanked with a local Beijinger by the walls of a huge Chinese Belltower - a most excellent evening.

My faithful welcome wagon from Gifted class 2; Paddy, Parker and Taylor.

We saw this T-shirt everywhere, a definite classic when worn with the female counter-part.

Skate shoes - If you visit Shanghai and somehow aren't harassed to buy these, you really haven't experienced Shanghai.

Margarita's played a large role throughout our stay. In the Chinese summer? Bless you!

Mr Pan at the Chinese wedding - one of the outright best parts of our trip.

Zhen zhou nai cha - or milk tea for the uninformed - oh how I miss thee. What a pity it was too hot for the past five months to really spend time with you.

The smell behind this mask was apparently legendary.

I can't believe we of all people stood before such an audience every single week.

We 'performed' for over 1700 different kids *every* single week during the height of our teaching. Each class had an average of 52-55 students.

And the things we ended up getting ourselves into..

Nothing was more embarrasing than completely sucking at making dumplings in front of a 'dumpling master.'

Dog in a bag, China, nuff said. (Oh and before you think it, NO this was not dinner, the country isn't that primative thx.)

Oh CCTV9 - How i will NOT miss thee. Good riddance!!

Last night in China! *sniff!*

And last but not least, a grand view of Wuxi City on what was actually quite a clear day.

And without further ado, Team Wuxi is…closed!!

My last post (Courtney)

2008-11-03T14:33:00.010+08:00

So it's probably time we wrapped up the blog. I'll leave the honours of final post to Marcus, but I wanted to sum up our time in China. I figure there's no better way to do this than with photos. There is so much life in China that you could never capture it all or give another person a true representation of what it is like to live there. It is a complicated and amazing place, really like no where else I have ever been.

So here are some of my fave pics of our time in China...

Well, the end is almost nigh (Marcus)

2008-10-27T09:42:00.002+08:00

The China adventure is well and truly over and we are slowly, very slowly returning to normality. The other day we watched the video mum took while she visited us in Shanghai and Wuxi and it already feels like our time in China was a distant memory.

I cannot immediately remember what it felt like to walk down broken tiled sidewalks, the light smell of smoke in the air or the constant noise, traffic and general feeling of being inside a beehive.

We have been slowly getting into job hunting(I say slowly as slowly refers to me, Courtney's been right in there and active!) and well, it kinda stinks. God only knows what I will end up doing next, and to tell you the truth it's a little scary.

Things are getting back on track, but our already dwindling savings are dwindling further until a steady source of income comes back in.

It's difficult living on the cheap here as even the smallest things feel expensive having come from a country where pretty much everything was cheap. My stomach has been having trouble adapting back to western food though - back to regular meat, breads and the like...

The weather has been up and down, yesterday actually humid. Having come from almost 5 straight months of humidity it was not overly wanted.

Regarding this blog, we'll likely be making a final post in the coming days to kind of wrap it all up. There is no point continuing it in this capacity as it was specifically for us to journal our way around China. It has been a fun experience and a great outlet to both vent and get in some writing practice, a past time that I in particular really enjoy.

What comes next? Who knows, but I am sure it will seem all the more duller now that we're back in a country where things are mostly predictable and the people on the whole, far less colourful. Sure Australia has it's own mix of characters and unpredictability, but it seriously can't compare to some of the things found in China. I really miss the randomness we experienced over there, how each day would bring something completely new and unexpected. But all in all, it is nice to be home.

Next life...

2008-10-21T13:19:00.003+08:00

..I'm coming back as a dog.

Since arriving in Mornington, we have become psuedo guardians of Wally the labradoodle. Wally is awesome, and very easy to care for as witnessed below...

Photos taken oven the last few days. If we coloured him purple we literally wouldn't know he was there!

An interesting blog (courtney)

2008-10-13T18:20:00.002+08:00

I have numerous blogs that I follow, one being of a fellow by the name of Geoff who lives in Nanjing. This is the capital of Jiangsu province, where we lived until 5 days ago. Sadly it's a city we never got to see.

Anyhoo, I read Geoff's blog. He's an Aussie man doing various teaching/learning in Nanjing. I find his blog very interesting. Obviously I can relate to a lot of it but I also appreciate his views on a lot of things or can at least see where he is coming from.

I just read his last 12 posts in a row - this being due to me being away from the computer and also he seems to have had a run on with posts throughout October.

I think if you read these posts you will get a deeper understanding of our life in China and how it is a fascinating yet difficult place all at once, particularly the relationships you develop with the students.

Home Sweet Home (Courtney)

2008-10-13T16:59:00.007+08:00

Somehow we have already been home for 5 days...when did that happen? It's been a real hit the ground running experience, with barely a minute spare. So it's with great joy that I am sitting at home tonight, having a cider after having cooked lamb (Lamb!! First time since January!) with a bit of marginally interesting telly in the background.

I really haven't yet had a chance to think about our experience and the fact that we are back home. There are moments where it all feels a little surreal, and other moments where it feels like we never left. I'm still struggling with crossing the road (eg - looking the wrong way, thankfully the roads aren't too hectic around here!) and truly can't get over the clarity of everything. It's amazing how far we can see, the sun and blue skies have been so wonderful to see and the clean, fresh air is just so...well fresh!

Marcus..enjoying being able to breathe! Look at that sky!

As you know, Thursday we arrived to find that even though we had decided to come home, my suitcase had decided to remain on holidays. Whilst the airport reassured us they would find it, and we joked that my bag was off holidaying in Portugal or picking up a habit in Columbia, it really was a stressful couple of days. I did my best to not throw any tantrums but it was honestly the last thing I needed at that point. Watching those bags go round and round and realising mine wasn't coming was very distressing. It wouldn't have been so bad coming home from holiday, but having come home after 8 months with literally NOTHING other than what was in that bag was not ideal. Thankfully my wonderful parents quickly whipped me off to the local Target to get some essentials for the next few days which was so appreciated...you know, clean undies, a toothbrush! My suitcase did decide to arrive home on Saturday morning after an extended stint in China so I was very very pleased to see it on Sunday afternoon.

My bro, Spence, and I driving to Mornington. So good to see you!

So after the madness of Thursday and the overwhelming joy of seeing my parents, my brother and Sarah before we knew it we were off in the car to Coldstream to help celebrate the wedding of our good friends Simone and Adrian! We had such a brilliant day and we just so pleased that we could be there to see this special day. I've known Simone for about 8 or 9 years now, what with us living parrellel lives and all, and I was just rapt that we were able to attend.

The gorgeous Simone and Adrian. Congrats guys! Such a beautiful wedding. Can't wait to hear all about the honeymoon..we are soo jealous!

Saturday it was off to Sarah's place. Sarah and her partner Ben are soon off to Africa for a year, so I hadn't expected to see her, them or their home! What a great home warming it has been. To sit in Sa's home just felt so normal and really made me feel settled. Not to mention she put on a great spread of all the things I was craving...mmmmhhhh. I am so happy we get to share another summer together before their big adventure begins. Sob!

Food!!! I missed doing this sooo much Sa =)

After trekking home yesterday (my first encounter, and sadly not my last, with Frankston train station) we headed out to see Sam and Jess' new home! Wow! What can I say, what a great place, so cosy already and such a great start. It was great to see them and sit around with a bit of Indian food, have a good talk and laugh. They aren't too far away from where we are now based which is very handy.

Finally we started settling in today. It has been such a blessing to be able to have our base in Mornington. We can't thank Marcus' mum enough, just to be able to return to Australia and have somewhere to call home has been fantastic. And also Nick is still here so we get to spend some time together before he returns to the UK. The suitcases are unpacked, we've put up a few Chinese knicknacks around our room and I feel a little bit more at home. It has been a crazy few days and I kind of felt like I moved country with a handbag! But today started to feel a bit more normal. I know it's going to be a while before we both truly feel like we are home and back in Australia. It's impossible not to compare things and marvel at how different the two countries are. The supermarket is sooo easy and there is so much good produce to buy. The sky is honestly so clear, I can't get over it. Thankfully it has been lovely weather so we aren't struggling too much with the cold. It smells different here, I can't put my finger on it, but China smells so different. Everything here is so open and spacious, I know it's home and we know it so well but even after that short amount of time away it really makes you think about how different Australia is to the rest of the world...and just how fortunate we all are.

Look who we are now guardians of...Wally!

The life of the Chinese is infinately more difficult than our lives here. I hope we retain that feeling and continue to appreciate the way of life here. China certainly hasn't diminished my love of travel, nor my desire to throw it all in again and move somewhere else...but it has certainly reinforced my love of home and just how great Australia is. Sure, it's been weird hearing the Aussie accent again (jesus we all sound like bogans don't we?!) and some random things we have seen have staggered us and made us cringe, but I'm sure it's only a short time before everything feels completely normal again. It's so strange suddenly being bombarded with all this noise - now, believe me China is NOISY, but here you can understand everything and that makes a big difference. Even when China is blaring in your ears you do tune out. It just becomes noise. But all of a sudden here, you have advertising, radio, tv, street conversations...just so much noise to take in.

I do miss China at the moment. Not hugely, and not in a homesick kind of way, although it really was our home in the end. But there are things that I miss, and I suppose you become so familiar with a place that suddenly a "new" place feels a little strange and foreign and like you have to settle back in again.

But it is good to be home =)

Lastly, a couple of final shots from China.

The packing begins. Thankfully the above case came home! Our cases weighed 52kg combined (yes, we were travelling economy) and that wasn't including backpacks, handbag and laptops!

Bye bye Tian Yi!

China has gotten to me.

We caught the fast train to Shanghai Airport. It does 431km per hour. I think you can tell by the below photo just how impressed I was by this...

...not very impressed at all. When it went around a curve it banked up on an angle...very unsettling.

Last night in China! And of course, it wouldn't be right if there wasn't big bottles of beer. I will miss being able to say "we are off to Shanghai for the weekend".

Team Wuxi is...Home! (Marcus)

2008-10-11T19:20:00.002+08:00

That's right, as you would no doubt know if you have been reading the blog lately we are in fact safely home in Australia.

It has been a whirlwind couple of days and we are trying to settle back into normality down here in sunny Mornington - that's one hour south of Melbourne for those not familiar with Australia.

The weather has been absolutely stunning and already it feels like China was a decade away rather than a mere few days. As we expected we are both starting to feel a little...I don't know, sad that we are home, questioning our achievements and the like but there has been one huge thing over-shadowing everything and that is of course Courtney's suitcase not making it home with us.

We waited and waited and waited at the baggage carousel and nada. We filed a report and left the airport with Courtney's parents, brother and best friend Sarah feeling somewhat upset. Courtney hasn't felt settled since but thank god we recieved a call this morning that the bag was located and they mailed it to us today via courier and well i think NOW we can start the settling in process.

We attended a wedding last night for Simone and Adrian which really was a great occasion. At the wedding was a whole bunch of our friends so seeing them was a welcome home of sorts.

We will put up some thoughts about what it feels like being home as it's not something you can just drop into a post without a bit of thought involved but i will say one thing.

The single most outstanding thing - or rather, the thing that has stood out the most, is the clarity of everything. Life literally looks sharp. It's like someone has just focused a camera and bam, everything just looks wonderful. The sky is blue, the trees are crisp green, buildings and hills can be seen absolutely miles away in the distance. It is not until you get back home to Australia until you realize how truly bad China's air quality is.

If someone says the air visibility in China is at say 100 metres - sure, you will see the silhouette/detail of a building 100 metres away, but a mere 5 metres away, between you and that wall, or you and that tree, you WILL see fog. It's never clear - ever. You get days that are much clearer than others - even those that will show you blue sky, but the air in China really is attrocious. I seriously can't believe how good everything back home looks with the smog factor completely removed.

More soon, byebye!

(ps. editors note - i cant get out of the habit of saying byebye - a term all chinese know. When you say, "Seeya!" or "Catch ya later" or just "Later" - no-one comprehends. But if you pay for your goods in China's version of 7-11 known as Kedi, and say Xiexie, byebye! they will say it back and know 100% what you mean. I feel kind of gimpy using it at home but I can't NOT at this point.)

Countdown (Courtney)

2008-10-08T10:23:00.002+08:00

Well as marcus has written about in his last couple of posts, we have been living it up in Shanghai for a few days. All that ends in 90 minutes! It's time to head to the airport and begin our journey home. I'm excited and nervous all at once. I'm actually not that nervous about what awaits us at home. It's going to be a difficult couple of months, looking for work and reorganising our lives again. But for me, the main thing today is flying...I am not all that fond of flying!! However, Jann has supplied me with some sleeping pills so with any luck I will be oblivious to the whole journey!

We have a big couple of weeks coming up when we return, which will certainly make being at home a lot easier, yet at the same time we wont really have all that much time to understand and reflect upon exactly what we have finished and what is ahead of us. We have Simone and Adrian's wedding on Friday, friends birthdays, Marcus birthday next weekend and of course catching up with family and friends and hopefully seeing our little cat Jimmy as well! It's going to be an interesting readjustment phase.

I'm still happy that we are going home and know that we have made the right decision. But of course there will be many aspects of life here in China that I will miss and probably long for whilst we get used to being back home again. China is this bustling place with so much to see and do. Granted, not that much to see and do where we were living (!) but there are so many people that everything is open late. There is always food to be had, places to walk and people to watch. We have seen some absolutely crazy things since we have been here, and I will definately miss the randomness of actions and how slowly but surely these things become normal. I think Melbourne is going to seem very calm in comparison for a while. China has been a huge adventure and we are so glad we got to travel around and see a big chunk of the country. Hopefully one day we can come back and see just how much things have changed.

Almost time to go! See you all back in Melbourne =)

Shanghai wonderful Shanghai (Marcus)

2008-10-07T22:06:00.004+08:00

We love this city, we really do.

Tonight is our last night in China and we are both feeling somewhat apprehensive about what the future might hold for us.

I know that when you go to live in another country that you experience a degree of culture shock - both different stages of initial and then reverse culture shock upon return. I also know that when we get home it will feel like we have never left and we'll both feel various degrees of depression questioning things such as - just what exactly have we achieved with this whole venture?

We are returning home without jobs, without a house, no car(well we can borrow one), barely any savings - nothing, nada, zip! But we also know that through what has turned into a sizeable adventure for us, as a couple we have achieved so much.

China will always have a near and dear place in our hearts and I feel there is no more fitting place to see it out than here in Shanghai. It is such a big, wonderful city. I feel truly sad that we will not have easy access to this place once we return home.

Shanghai is truly the embodiment of East meets West. Here you have the very pinnacle of the Chinese forays into the rest of the world. It is here - much moreso than Beijing(in my opinion) that you truly experience the real China for behind the skyscrapers, around the corners and down the alleys, here you have the local lifeblood of China and man does it beat with a vibrant pulse.

I know for a fact that if i came to live in China again it would be in Shanghai. While Wuxi has it's lovable elements and definitely positives, and while we really liked Beijing, it has been Shanghai that has consistently enthralled us. The place feels great. Everywhere you go are interesting variations of Chinese daily life. The city is so diverse, so sprawling! In Lonely Planet is says that Beijing has a predictable navagational design - seeing the city was specifically built from the middle out, whilst Shanghai is all over the place making it difficult and that I feel is what makes it so wonderful.

You can wander all over it and see different things down different streets. Shanghai's history of Western occupation has created vast quadrants where you can litterally step from France into Britain and back into China again all within the same hour.

I imagine New York is very much like Shanghai but a lot more modern. I'd really like to see it one day to compare.

We have been talking about the things we are and are not going to miss about being here. It's quite lengthy and we'll save it for another post but for now, we have enjoyed our final days in China and know that Australia; particularly Mornington where we will be living for a few months is going to be soooooooo extremely quiet - so boringly quiet compared to this country of millions.

I know now how my best friend Sam would have felt when he returned home from living in Japan for a year; a country that he absolutely loved. I just wish that there was a different means of working here that didn't specifically involve teaching. It would be a fair blast living here and making western wages - it would mean we could actually save a large amount whilst doing all the things we have really enjoyed along the way. And besides, there's still a ton of places here we haven't seen. Maybe next time...

Team Wuxi is...well, in Shanghai (Marcus)

2008-10-06T16:14:00.011+08:00

Well we have officially left Wuxi, possibly forever! We both left with somewhat heavy hearts - this oddball chunk of China having been our homes for the past 8 or so months. We did a final lap of the school; trying to soak up every little detail for one last time, but now that we are in Shanghai, it already feels like forever since we were there.

We had purchased train tickets to go to Shanghai but decided to pay one of the school drivers to bring us here instead. We're travelling heavy(you know, the moving country thing) with a really heavy suitcase each, laptops, carry bags etc. All in all the amount of luggage wasn't so much of a problem, with a little patience and multiple trips moving it is easy - it's the moving of said luggage through a train station absolutely filled to the brim with people.

The thought of taking our luggage through the wildebeast stampede that is the Chinese stations was just horrifying. On top of this, Chinese trains are super efficient. You have litterally a 10 or so minute window to get down to and onto the train. It arrives exactly on time, hangs around for 5-10 minutes and then it's on it's way. It would have just a stressful nightmare and well, the driver option whilst quite expensive was easily one of the best decisions of our time here.

The drive itself was somewhat uneventful. It only took around an hour and a half which was a bonus as when we were originally picked up from the Pudong Airport it took around 3 hours to get to the school. We passed the burning wreck of a coach bus which was pretty full-on. I have read in various travel novels of people seeing burning busses by the roadsides in China and to actually see one was a bit of an eye-opener. Hopefully no-one was injured, but with the way the busses drive in this country(actually make it the way anyone driving anything drives period) it wouldn't have surprised me.

We are staying in a nice hotel right near People's Park(The middle of Shanghai CBD) which has been terrific. We have tons of interesting things in every direction. Courtney and I stayed just up the road from here in a hostel once before so are somewhat familiar with the area. It has been fun having mum here and showing her all the sights on offer.

We have been trying to show mum as much of the 'local China' as possible, but it's not easy sometimes. It's hard to really convey to a visitor what China is really like. I don't think you can ever really come here for a few weeks and go home with a realistic Chinese experience. Whenever we talk to other people who live here we can all talk at length about the various nuances that is the chinese culture. Thankfully we have had a few different things that have randomly cropped up that mum has been able to experience. I think when she goes home she will have a much better she will have actally seen a lot more than the everyday traveller.

We are experts no more :( At least we have proof that we once were!

We had one final catch-up with Matt and Abby with Mum while in Wuxi. We'll miss you guys!

Right up until the final moments, Wuxi remained true to itself. A week before leaving, just down from the Blue Bar expat hangout, we were lucky enough to witness a dog run past wearing...dogshoes.

And on the last night in Wuxi...dog in a bag. This is exactly what I am going to miss about China. Where else in the world would you EVER find such consistently classic, completely randomly comedy. The country is just hilarious. We see so much of this stuff every single day that it will stay with us for a very long time. Check out the next photo...

Today in a large market at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum - we stopped in a Japanese fast-food place and it was just after lunch time. This of course means it's naptime...check the staff member behind me. I truly can't say how much I love seeing stuff like this. The country is just a crack-up.

In a large garden beside the Yu Yuan temple market area found this fantastic Chinese lion. Normally they're pretty similar with the same..well liony face, but this guy, this guy has personality! If this guy were real, he wouldn't eat you, he'd want a hug!

The view from our final destination in China. This is overlooking People's Park and the surrounding buildings. There's a terrific combination of modern buildings, local streets and everything else in between. We are really going to miss the adventure that has been China. While returning to normality will be wonderful, China will always be a special memory for us. I have no doubt we will return in the future if only for a holiday and of course to visit our dear friend Mr Pan.

And last but not least (for now), the following few images were taken with Mum's friend Di's camera - which quickly showed us how crap our own one was at taking night photos - well not as good. Once more we went to the 26th floor to the open air bar overlooking the Bund from the North and watched day become night and the majesty of Shanghai unfold. We will really really miss this wonderful city.

We took Mum and Di to one of Shanghai's older original streets to eat at this brightly lit restaurant. We have been here previously and just like the first time it didn't disappoint.

Zài jiàn!

Farewell Mr Pan

2008-10-03T16:00:00.003+08:00

So this afternoon we said our farewells to Mr Pan and family. Being the national day week long holiday, they are today off to Suzhou for a couple of days with Mr Pan's father and friends. We simply could not leave without saying goodbye to Mr Pan so we have spent the majority of a long, sleepy day hanging around the apartment awaiting his return to the school.

Jann brought 3 wonderful kangaroo toys with her from Australia so we could present them to Mr Pan, Mr Shen and Raymen. Secretly I wanted to keep one for myself!

Mr Pan, his wife Oolan and daughter Delia stopped by this afternoon. It was certainly a sad farewell as they have become a mini family to us and we know they think the same of us too. Mr Pan has just done more than we could ever have expected or asked for, nothing was ever a problem or unsolvable and we really will miss him. With any luck we will hopefully see him one day in Australia, and we made it clear that if Delia ever studies in Australia we will take her under our wing and try to repay some of our debt to Mr Pan. Our time in China would have been a very very different experience with out our beloved Mr Pan!

Of course, Mr Pan can't arrive without a present, and this one was really spectacular.

We have wanted a traditional Chinese tea set for a long time now but have yet to buy one. Mr Pan has a couple and he used a similar one to this the time we went to the teahouse for lunch, teaching us the proper method of pouring the tea. So it was with great pleasure that are now the owners of the above set and we will think of him whenever we see it.

Goodbye Mr Pan! We hope to see you again some day!

Jann's visit..so far.

2008-10-03T15:50:00.004+08:00

Here is Jann and Marcus at the famous Yu Yuan Gardens in Shanghai. Check out the beautiful day - blue skies in Shanghai!

You couldn't come all this way and not have your photo taken in front of the Golden Apple!

Here we are showing Jann how us "locals" get around - by pedicab! For what can be a hair-raising experience Jann was very cool, calm and collected!

Wednesday was China's National Day - a huge holiday. We went into Wuxi at night to show Jann all the city lights and the city didn't disappoint. It had been dressed up for the holiday (or especially for Jann's visit) with lights and lanterns everywhere. We couldn't help but feel a bit sentimental wandering around our adopted home.

Yesterday we needed to go to the post office one last time and as we left the school we happened upon Mr Shen returning home with his wife. Well, he couldn't let the distinguished guest simply catch a cab, so he took it upon himself to drive us. We didn't get all that far as the lines of communication were having some difficulties - as you can see from the above with Marcus looking on the map and Mr Shen with our translation book, god only knows what he thought he would find to help him in there! He ended up relinquishing the task to one of the school drivers. It was a very kind gesture and was an interesting experience for Jann to see how things can get lost in translation!!

Once we finally managed to get the driver to go home and enjoy his holiday (he wanted to wait for us all day whilst we were in the city), we wandered up to the Grand Canal and then onto the Nanchang Temple Market to see some sites. Tonight - one final supper in the city with Matt and Abby and then it's bye bye Wuxi!

Special Guest Post - (Jann!)

2008-10-02T10:59:00.003+08:00

Hi every addicted Marcus and Courtney blogger reader. I arrived late Saturday (plane delayed per usual) and it was just fantastic to see the kids at the hotel. They both look great. China has certainly not done them any harm instead here are two very confident, worldy adults now ready for their next challenge back in Oz.

Marcus walked me around their school yesterday and it was very surreal. Everything was so familiar and it all feels as if I have literally fallen into the blog! (I haven't missed a day of the past 7+ months checking the blog at least twice daily). I have been videoing it all so be prepared for many hours of Team Wuxi Chinese experience.

I have now had the fun of a chinese train, mad driving taxis', local bus and pedicab, the city celebrating an important holiday and the local area restaurants where all of the kitchen staff come out to stare and see us eat and that is only in the past 2 days!!

I could write so much more but basically it is all in their blog, I am just living it!!! I feel very lucky to be here.

Jann x

Alas, Teachers no more. (Marcus)

2008-09-27T12:57:00.004+08:00

So yesterday came and went and now we have signed our exit contracts and are effectively no longer teachers. This is a good thing really, as it means we will head home, but I do feel a little - I don't know, I guess sentimental about it as I did enjoy many elements of teaching.

The actual teaching part - standing there in front of the kids, interacting with them, laughing with them, it was very enjoyable. Walking around the school as the complete centre of attention was not so much. While it had it's novelty value, it did get old after a while.

For example if you look at the larger version of this image below, this is what I saw every day as I approached class from the lake. A sea of students. The photo below is actually a fraction of the number of students normally in this area. Now you think - that doesn't sound so bad, but just imagine that as you walked in amongst them, every single one of them - and I mean every single one of them reacts to you. The girls giggle, the boys go all goofy. Their body language changes, you get hello's left right and centre to the point where you feel like an idiot as you're just walking along going, "Hello! Hi! Hello! Hi! Hi! Hey! Hello! Hi! Hello!"

Courtney and I are not big fans of being the centre of attention - hell I don't even like being it on my birthday. For us this whole China experience has been well and truly stepping outside our comfort zones. It has taught us a lot, given us a lot of new perspectives on different things, but I guess most of all it has shown us just how valuable our home country is to us.

A lot of people - or perhaps all, go away then say, "You don't know how good home is until you leave..." which sounds kind of cliche as it's like, the 'in' thing to say - but in China - it couldn't be truer.

I think it takes a certain type of person to really live here and immerse yourself. I honestly believe those coming here looking for Chinese wifes - aka the majority of the expat community, are exactly that type. Having a day in day out translator breaks down a large portion of not only the language barrier, but the cultural barrier. Different people want different things. Myself? I wouldn't stay here any longer than a year tops, if even that.

If I was coming back to do it again, I would be armed with considerably more knowledge than when we first arrived. For one I would likely only live in one of the larger cities - Beijing or Shanghai - perhaps a handful of others, but I would have to see them first. I would make sure that where i worked/taught/whatever I did had other foreigners likewise working there. I would make sure that where I worked and where I lived were both in very close proximity(ie 5 minute walking distance) from the actual CBD.

Our district is only 7km's or so from the CBD; it really is very close. When we first looked at Wuxi as a location on google maps, Dongting/Xishan district is only really as far out from the centre of the CBD as say Richmond/Hawthorn is from Melbourne CBD. That's very workable. What we didn't know however, is this particular district is basically considered 'country,' by Chinese standards. It is in no way an inner suburb, it's effectively the boonies. This has played a very large part in our overall China experience - both good and bad.

On the good side we've been able to really experience true Chinese life. We can honestly say we have seen how they really live their day to day lives - and lived around them. On the bad however, it's also put us in a location where we're effectively stared at 24/7 and have never really felt welcome.

The Chinese as a culture are interesting, but they are sooo different to people back in Australia. So different! They can be both extremly generous, friendly and surprisingly approachable, but at the same time extremely infuriating. This is a country where basically anything goes. We still see things on a daily basis that just makes us crack up.

Through everything we have experienced we have kept our senses of humour and I think that is the key to survival here. If you cant look at the funny side of things, you're toast.

So today we're off to Shanghai to stay for three nights with Mum who is on the plane as I type this. It's a surreal thought to think we haven't seen her in something like 7 months as it only really feels like a few weeks at best. Back home we don't even regularly see each other month to month as we live in the city and she doesn't, but still.

We had to queue for around an hour yesterday for train tickets as every man and his dog was out there trying to buy them first thing in the morning. Wednesday is the national holiday, and yesterday was five days before it. In China, you can only buy your train tickets five days before the day you wish to use them - so yesterday was the day.

The Chinese don't seem to mind queuing one little bit - perhaps because they're used to it. I also suspect they just enjoy being around each other. I can't say for sure as it's never really obvious to us who is friends with who, or who knows who previously, but it seems from our point of view that every single Chinese person in China is happy to just go up to a complete stranger(Chinese) and start conversing. They also seem to incredibly enjoy giving and recieving directions or guiding each other into reverse carparks. They're an odd people - one I don't think I could every truly understand completely. Whenever I try and give them an overall description that really explains them - my head starts hurting.

So we're off to Shanghai for the next three nights, back to Wuxi to show Mum around for another 4, then off to Shanghai for yet another 4 or so nights, then we're flying back to Melbourne on the 8th October.

The weather as Courtney posted has become decidedly cooler and well it's going to be a trip of an experience returning to normality.

China has gone by in the blink of an eye, but man, this country is just crazy.

Brrrr! (Courtney)

2008-09-26T23:35:00.003+08:00

Since May, it has been an average temperature of about...oooh, lets say 40 degrees every day. The temperature is normally mid thirties, but once the humidity is added in, it feels normally around 45 degrees.

So you can say it's been unbearably hot for five consecutive months without a break. In these five months, we have not worn pants, or socks, or shoes, or any other item of warm clothing. It can be 2am and it's still much warmer than balmy. For us Melbourne folk, there have been some pretty intense days. Days where your energy is sapped just walking up the stairs to class (and not in a I'm unfit way). Days where I've perspired more than I physically thought I could. Days where there is no incentive to leave our apartment. In short, it's been a loooooooong hot summer.

Well that all changed today. Today was about 20 degrees. Whilst this is not cold, to us it felt positively miserable. And you can see from above that it is currently 17 degrees outside. From yesterday's 40, this suddenly feels very very cold. We went out for dinner with Matt and Abby this evening and there was shoes, socks, pants and even jumpers! We have no doubt this is the beginning of the end and within a couple of weeks it will be utterly freezing again. The weather changes here are distinct and fast. And as much as summer has been exhausting, boy am I glad we are getting out before winter settles in!

The End is Nigh (Courtney)

2008-09-25T11:36:00.003+08:00

So, we are down to our final days as teachers and Chinese residents. This time in two weeks we will have cleared customs in Melbourne and be..somewhere!

This week has been dubbed "Operation Avoidance", in an attempt to remain unseen by all leaders of the school. Why you ask? Well, there is this iddy bitty clause in our contract which has been causing us much stress over the last few weeks. It's the Breach of Contract Fee, which can range from $500 to $2000 USD, if either party breach the contract. In our initial talks with the school it was never mentioned, but then during drunken Teachers' Day celebrations it was mentioned...in a very underhanded type of way by a certain individual. This sent us into a spin, and we have been at a loss as to what to do ever since. Bring it up? Ignore it? Hope we get to the last day and there isn't security waiting for us?! It's been weighing on our minds greatly.

However, we figured if it was mentioned as a requirement to our leaving, we would play the card of "well, you agreed to release us and have only brought this up now", coupled with "actually, you don't have to reimburse our flights, you didn't pay for medical insurance...and actually here are all the things we were promised which never happened...so I think we are square". And if all of that failed, our last attempt would be to get mediation with the Education Department in Nanjing.

So we have tried our best to be scarce around the school and so far it had worked. We want to leave on good terms.

And then this morning the phone rang. Whilst we can run, we obviously can't hide. It was Mr Pan's office number and we stood over the phone as it rang, umming and aahing at to whether we should answer it. We figured he would just call again or come over so I picked up the phone.

"Courtney, I come to your home with termination contract."

Panic. We know by rights there has to be a termination contract but that didn't make us any more eager to see it. So Mr Pan comes over to show us the contract, which we will sign tomorrow with Mr Shen. He handed me the contract and I couldn't even read it, all I could do was frantically scan it for the fee. And then I see it, a sentence with the words "$500 - $2000 USD" included and my heart sank. Figured I had better read the whole thing properly and see what we were up for.

Well well my friends, the gods have shined, because the sentence read "Party B agrees to pay Party A a breaking fee of between $500 to $2000. However, Party A has forgiven Party B, so no penalty will apply."

OH YEAH!!!! Oh the weight that has been lifted from our shoulders. I can't tell you how many times we have spoken about this in the last few weeks, not once coming to a conclusion about what to do. So to read that was just the definition of relief and happiness. And it also proves to us yet again that Mr Shen, the principle, is a very decent man. We have great respect for him and have never felt like he would not do the right thing by us. Unfortunately a lot of people cannot say the same thing about the schools they work for.

So the end is nigh. Two more days of classes and we are done. It's an odd feeling, as so far this week it hasn't felt as though we are leaving - obviously Operation Avoidance had something to do with this. But now it feels real, we are actually leaving. We meet Marcus' mum on Saturday in Shanghai which is just going to be fantastic and before you know it we will be back in Melbourne. Next week is the National holiday however Mr Pan is still going to be here until Wednesday, so Jann can meet him and we can get to say a proper goodbye which is what we have wanted.

Tomorrow night we will have Matt and Abby over and enjoy a final supper together. And somewhere in between classes, dinner and Shanghai we have a heck of a lot of stuff to do! Nothing like moving country twice in one year to send you into organisational chaos. Speaking of which, I have things to do!

It's been a long time between drinks... (Marcus)

2008-09-21T21:46:00.006+08:00

...or blog posts rather. I guess over the past few weeks as we start to slowly wind down and depart, my mind has been on other things. While previous I have been thinking about nothing other than China China China - now - well I guess it's more focused on 'real world' stuff like, resumes and finding a job and christ why are we going home again!!!

Nah just kidding -while finding a new job and returning to normality is going to be hard after this surreal little adventure, it's going to be good to advancing forward again. While in China we've had the opportunity to experience an absolute myriad of things we honestly never thought we would, we're not actually going anywhere. We're making very average money(by Australian standards) which means our bank balances are slowly dwindling, we're not moving any closer towards things such as house deposits, car's, more cats(!) and essentials such as...large high definition TV's....yes damnit! I don't care what you say Courtney!

So we're about to start our final week of teaching and I really have to say this time round? It really has been a LOT better. The students are much much better. Their english is better, they're more willing to talk and participate - oh and we only have 10 classes a week - that helps too. I don't know what it is but I suspect a big part of it is the fact we have started teaching them from the start of their school year - not mid-way through. I am sure I have spoken about this before.

Anyhow the last few weeks have been brimming with the usual random things. I really shouldn't let the blog slip for so long in between posts as I really forget a lot of the things that go on.

First random item on today's agenda is our german bread. Yes, we have been eating german bread from Germany with our breakfast and I have to say it's pretty damned awesome.

I recieved this random email a few days ago from a friend of ours named Josh:

Hi Marcus,

How are you doing?

Just now I called you, it seems that you are at there.

I just get back from my trip to USA and Germanny and I bought some bread for you from Frankfurt this morning around 1:00AM Beijing time, and the bread is already in my home.

I would like to send the bread to you at once, as I do not know how long the bread can be kept. I know nothing about bread.

Please give me a call, I will call you again.

So uh...yeah, German bread coming our way! We met Josh the following day, he has a huge bag full of bread and well now our freezer is stuffed to the point of overflowing with the stuff. But man, it's normal bread! Something of a luxury item here in sunny China. I guess I really made an impression on him with my complaints about the sweet Chinese bread on offer around here. That's one thing I cant wait to get my teeth into when we get home.

Speaking of sunny - at the change of season to Autumn the weather started to really cool down and I thought hey, it's going straight towards being cold - this country being somewhat clearcut with it's seasonal conditions, but no, it's heating right back up again. Along with the return of the heat comes an increase in mosquitoes, yay!

I think I can actually sum up China's yearly weather conditions now perfectly. You have a few months of absolutely bitingly cold, and then it's hot with mosquitoes for the rest of the year. I think the thing I have enjoyed the least about living here is without doubt - mosquitoes. I absolutely cannot stand them. I seriously do not know how people can live in areas where they are rampant. They are the single most annoying thing I have ever experienced ever. I cant remember what it's like to walk around NOT itching myself all over - or better yet, waking up in the wee hours of the morning with hands so itchy it almost hurts.

So because we're almost leaving, we decided to catch up for a final time with our New Zealand pals Matt and Abby and head out and have a bit of fun. We were going to go check this movie set place down on the lake(Tai Hu). There's supposedly three movie sets which from what I gather are also a bit theme-park like. They actually make movies there to this day. There's three sets and they range in theme, one of them being like, Tang Dynasty, another Three Kingdoms etc etc. All in all it sounded like a bit of fun, and also in the 7 months we've been here we have spent a grand total of 30 minutes by the lake...the lake being the 3rd biggest in China and one of the reasons Wuxi is in the top 10 destinations for chinese tourists. Don't worry mum, we'll take you there at least, then we can like both experience it for the first time!

So it gets to yesterday and the weather could not possibly have been more foul. It was boiling hot and absolutely smoggy as hell. Blech. The heat I don't mind so much now, but the smog really gets to me. I do not feel like going anywhere when it's that polluted. Wow - look at the lake..it's so beautiful...under it's ABSOLUTE BLANKET OF SMOG!! Matt reckons it's only really partially smog, while the humidity brings a lot of the vapour out of the water and into the air. Because this area is absolutely packed with water - canals/lakes etc, that's possibly the reason why in hotter weather the air conditions can worsen. I don't know...it sounds like a legit explanation, but the black crap it leaves on everything and the fact it's light blue in colour(like smoke) kind of stinks of smog to me.

So we headed off to Matt and Abby's and then walked from their place to a bus stop. We needed bus 72 and of course it got there just ahead of us and wouldn't wait for us as all four of us started running to make it. Then to my complete lack of surprise, along came bus 27 x 4. That's right, 4 of the same bus in a row. Go figure. It was a 20-40 minute wait for the next 72, so rather than waiting we ended up grabbing a cab. As we got into the cab I looked back along the highway and noticed the sky had darkened somewhat - the light grey smog was not a darker grey which usually meant incomming rain. I told the others and Abby agreed with the wind really picking up and moving the trees. We decided to ditch the movie set and turn around and go into the city - and man it was the best decision we made as it started bucketing down.

One thing about China is when it rains getting a cab can be a nightmare. Being stuck out at the lake and not being able to get home in the rain? Oh joyous day.

So we ended up just wandering around the city, realizing that yeah there's really not much to do entertainment wise. We chilled in Starbucks for a while, walked around the shops, then finally ended up in the German beer garden for a cold beer and air-conditioning. We then headed off to TGI Fridays - our western food destination of choice, had a few cocktails then off to Blue Bar for some more again. By the end of the night I am happy to say Courty was fair sloshed and man I wish i could have video'ed her drunked stompy walk effort on the way back home, it was so damned cute. I put her to bed and she went out like a light, and well, that was our day!

Here's Courtney enjoying our lovely day out with Matt and Abby. Worst weather ever.

The rest of us opted to sit under shelter and wait the rain out.

Matt & Abby - we'll miss you guys! We got to experience Mars together..litterally!

Next stop Drunktown!

And in completely unrelated news - the other day in the local super-supermarket, E-Mart that opened around the corner, we stumbled upon REAL ACTUAL MINCE MEAT! Now this is a win for the little people. Our cooking to date has been hampered by the fact that other than frozen chicken fillets from Metro, it is really really hard to find decent beef - or tender meat period. This mince is fantastic, and we tag-team went to town and made hamburgers and goddamn I have to say that while the photo doesn't really show it, these were some of the best burgers I have tasted in my life. I breathed them in so fast they were gone and I am still sad :(

We have seen this little character on so many products around the place - including the above drink that we decided finally to buy one of the damned things and see what it was. The brand is apparently called 'Want Want', and it has it's own website, www.wantwant.com. We looked up the above drink and this turned out to be a Strawberry flavour of their 'Bubbalicious' line. Well the end product is like a not-milk drink - think a milk drink crossed with a standard softdrink but really being neither - and mega strawberry flavoured - kind of tasted like Strawberry Quik. Neither of us could drink it, it was kinda...crap. I did buy the standard flavoured one today and it was sort of like weird Creamy Soda. So yeah, experimentation right up until the end, hoorah.

And last but not least, one of my new gifted students, a little girl with the name..Iris, drew this for me. Make sure you click on this photo for the full-sized - best picture yet! Cracked me up, I thanked her profusely. It makes you feel good when a student draws something for you - or gives you a gift. I will miss the teacher/student bonds that form, I really will. Who knows, maybe one day I'll look into Primary teaching or something. The teaching i didn't mind so much, it was just the lesson planning that stunk.

Oh and in final final news - my poor brother Nick broke his arm recently - an arm he's broken multiple times in the past due to skate-boarding. Get well soon buddy! And Mum is looking to still come over in around a weeks time - now that will be fun! Can't wait! And that's all folks, catch!

Next stop home (Courtney)

2008-09-19T16:17:00.004+08:00

Well, Shanghai-Wuxi-Shanghai-HongKong-Melbourne...but you get my drift.

We've booked our flights and will be home 9th October. I can't wait. I miss Melbourne, everyone and everything there. Sure, I'll miss China too, but I think the above speaks volume for just how great home is going to be!

1. Melbourne: Twilight & Melbourne's tallest building, 2. Hosier Lane, Melbourne, VIC, 3. Arrivals, 4. coffee cave, 5. Melbourne Botanical Gardens, 6. Colorful Beach House, 7. 'Polyester'" shop on Brunswick Street, Melbourne, Australia, 8. Caffe Latte - The Maling Room, 9. Yering Frog, 10. thin men 1, 11. Melbourne Moomba Fireworks, 12. Melbourne tram, 13. Queen Victoria Market, 14. high in the sky CBD wheel melbourne, 15. compulsive reading , 16. 5 November 2007

Teachers' Day (Courtney)

2008-09-16T19:11:00.010+08:00

Last Wednesday was Teachers' Day, which we assume is an international thing. I found out about Teachers' Day on the Tuesday afternoon when my class presented me with a card and very kindly, some "Golden Throat" lozengers. The week before in class I was still getting over my virus and the kids wanted to know why I was drinking so much water...hence the throat lozengers which I thought was very cute.

My appearance is like a gentle breeze to my students...

So Wednesday morning rolls around and we don't really think much of what the day might hold. Mr Pan calls to tell us there is an assembly at 3:30 and Mr Shen, the principle, would like us to attend. No probs. Then James, one of Marcus' previous students came over with a bunch of flowers and a box of moon cakes. Flowers for Teachers' Day, moon cakes for Mid-Autumn Festival (yes, I know it appears there is a holiday for everything here!)

Our classes rolled around and there were more presents and cards and well wishes to be had. I have to say, it felt really good and Ithought the kids were very sweet in their wishes.

Some of Marcus' haul, including handmade cards.

One class gave me two fish money boxes. I then had to take them to gifted class where a bunch of kids ran off with them and made them "kiss".

Sooooo sexy ;-)

Then of course assembly time came, in true China style it was an "extravaganza". We met Mr Pan at his office after class and he took us to the assembly, thankfully seating us somewhere up the back and not our normal front row, centre seats. Upon entering the building though, we were all greeting by a double line of gifted students, all waving and cheering. This was funny enough to see them all doing their awkward kiddie waves, but the classic part was that they were all dressed up in uniforms and makeup...boys included...

Here's a selection of the gifted students reading a poem. A touch hard to see the makeup but you can make out some coloured lips and cheeks.

The assembly started with the vice-principle speaking. Funnily enough he had memorised a short sentence in English to welcome Marcus and I which we thought was very amusing and nice. Mr Shen then spoke for a while, welcoming the teachers and then of course "Marc-a-si" and "Court-a-ney". We are obviously the guests as always. Numerous teachers names were read out, these were the people receiving teaching awards for their efforts. Each row was then brought up and presented with bunches of flowers by the gifted students.

Students presenting flowers to the teachers. They then had to salute the teachers which was hysterical to watch - a whole bunch of 11 year olds just throwing their hands around.

But! Inbetween all the flower presentations was of course.....singing. Seriously, there are times when you feel that either a)all of China sings, or b) you have stumbled into a taping of China Idol. It's NEVER ENDING!!! I got a message from Abby halfway through saying she was at a never ending Teachers' Day concert...I sent my sympathies and returned to massaging my temples.

There was singing...

..and singing..

...and more singing!

Here is a selection of gifted teachers singing, note "random camera man" at the left of the frame.

And finally, someone who could sing, the music teacher. This was an epic song about...the national flag.

Of course the best was left till last. That being us of course. And no, I don't mean singing, although of course we were asked! Raymen invariably asks us at each function if we will sing, to which we invaribly say "no" and smile through gritted teeth. He then persists and asks instead "How about Courtney performs a traditional Australian dance then?" At this I laugh maniacally everytime and do not bother answering. But the best till last bit was of course Mr Shen presenting us with our own bunches of flowers and posing for photos. Sadly I have no photos of that, although Marcus did do his best to ruin the other photos "random photographer man" (you've heard of him before) was taking of us. We have yet to find any photos of us on the intranet, which is a real shame for all our readers ;-)

MORE flowers!

Teachers' Day was then followed up by a banquet dinner...which well, let's just leave it there shall we.

Hey there fatty! (Courtney)

2008-09-13T08:56:00.002+08:00

Is it just my experience, or do the Chinese think of foreigners as being fat? I really think there is the perception that foreigners on the whole are fast food eating, lazy fatties...regardless of what you actually look like.

The first night we were here, everyone was amazed at how "big and strong" we were, yet we seemed to not eat as much as they expected. This was mentioned the next day again at lunch as the teachers hoed into their lunches whilst we picked away. Marcus and I don't feel particularly huge. Marcus is generally considerably taller than any Chinese man, but not like a giant. For those who don't know me, I am average height and average build, and generally feel like I am of average size in China too. I came here expecting to feel gianormous (as we have the opposite stereotype that all Chinese are tiny) but most of the time I feel pretty normal. Yes, occassionally I see my reflection in the mirror as I stand in line in a bathroom or something and realise I am a good head taller than everyone there, but for the most part I feel normal. There are many girls of the same size as me and there are just as many who are smaller and larger.

But for some reason, I seem to find myself being percieved as this big westerner. The kids in class all think I am tall, and are surprised when I tell them that in Australia I am just normal height. Mostly though, I get this feeling when I am shopping. For some reason, even when I am standing with the shop assistant and she can size me up for herself, I am invariably given clothes that are a good two sizes bigger than me.

I don't understand Chinese clothing sizes and I'm not going to try to explain them. After a number of shopping outings I have pretty much figured out which sizes I need to look out for. Not that anything ever fits anyway, but I live in hope. In a lot of Chinese shops though, you are given overly attentive service - this means you are followed around the shop and as soon as you touch something your size is procurred for you etc etc. What amazes me is the sizes I am given. Without doubt they will be too big, and when I ask for smaller I am given quizzical looks as if to say "surely not?" When I bought a pair of black cropped pants I literally had to beg the assistant to let me try on the smaller size as she just couldn't believe that they would fit me and wouldn't give them to me.

Recently I went to Suzhou with Abby and her sister for a day of shopping. I wanted to try on a pair of shoes but the size on the shelf was one too big for me. So in my vast Chinese I ask the assistant for my size. She looks at my feet, again with that quizzical look. Now, granted I was wearing my birkenstocks, which aren't the daintiest of shoes and make my feet look like those of a gladiator. But I'm pretty sure I know what shoe size I am. She sends the other guy out to find my size. He returns and I put the shoes on. My feet fall out of them. I look at the tag and they are size 40. I asked for 37. I call the girl over again pointing out the 40 and how I wanted a 37. It doesn't matter what you tell them, they will decide whether this is the correct size or not. Needless to say the guy went looking again and never returned. Still don't know where he went.

Months ago I went to the medical clinic around the corner for the first time. This was about 6 weeks after we had arrived, and with all the changes and illnesses I had during those weeks, I had lost about 7kgs. When the nurse asked for my weight she would not write it down. Just plain and simple didn't believe me. Tried to write down that I was 10kgs heavier than I am. Kept asking me to confirm that this was the correct number. Infuriating! She kept looking at me and saying "But the number is too small for you."

I've often wondered whether it's just me that this happens to, or whether all expats experience this. The sizings in China are all over the place so I don't take offence anymore when I have to try on large or x-large pants, but it does intrigue me that I am considered to be this large person. I have plans on going shopping today...wish me luck!

Bureaucracy Gone Made (Courtney)

2008-09-12T16:27:00.002+08:00

Stumbled upon this blog the other day and got a big belly laugh out of the below...

"In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

Oh how I would love to see the paperwork and red stamps required for that!

CCTV9

2008-09-12T16:16:00.002+08:00

We've probably mentioned CCTV9 before. It's the English language television channel. It's horrendous. I really mean that, it's horrible.

Here's an example...

This is from a show called Dialogue. They get random whities on to talk about deep issues, mostly so they can say grand things about China.

What makes a champion? Not you buddy.

Honestly, what was he thinking??

The Post Office (Courtney)

2008-09-07T10:09:00.003+08:00

Yesterday we headed into the city to do two things - one being have some dinner with Abby, and the other to go to the post office. We've bundled up a whole lot of stuff that we have bought whilst here and decided it was time to send it home.

The post office, I think is without doubt, one of the most frustrating experiences you can have in China. There are daily frustrations, but the post office really gets to me. It is an exhausting process and we knew yesterday when we headed off with two bags full of stuff that we were in for a long haul.

First you head to one counter to buy boxes. I swear the guy just makes up the price as he goes along, as I've never paid the same amount for a box. You then make your way over to the actual service counter. This is can be a primal free for all, and you need to hold your ground with elbows out to actually get to the counter and then stay at the front of the counter. People basically just push and shove and the counter staff end up serving about 5 people at once, I have no idea how they keep track of what they are doing.

We got to the counter and held our ground and somehow managed to get the undivided attention of one of the guys. The guys who work here generally look about the age of our students. We've had varying levels of success. The first time I went to the post office, the girl looked at my stuff, I told her where I wanted to send it, she looked at me, said no and then walked away. No explanation, just wouldn't serve me. So I had to find someone else to help, which means going through the whole push and shove process again.

Next time, we had one of the guys, who had about as much personality as a dead fish. He was so ridiculously thorough with the items we wanted to send we started to assume he thought we were drug dealers or something. Then last time when we went to the post office, we got a young girl who didn't really look at very much. Which was a god send as we had a million little things all wrapped up and I didn't fancy unwrapping them etc.

There's a point to note - don't bother wrapping anything before going to a Chinese post office because they are just going to rip through everything anyway! We saw this happen to a girl yesterday who arrived with a very carefully wrapped present. It certainly looked worse for wear by the time it got into the postage box.

So yesterday, we got Mr Personality. Seriously, can't crack a smile from this guy. We had two full bags of things (Don't worry mum, the boxes are going to take 2 months so we'll be home to collect them by the time they arrive!) and I had wrapped up most stuff in bubble wrap so it has some chance of survival. Of course, everything was pulled to pieces. What's great about this though, is he just kind of then makes a pitiful attempt at putting the bubble wrap back around the item then tosses it into the box. I'm like, here, you do the looking, I'll do the packing!! We had a number of fragile items and as he looks at them he's like "this is not good, broken." And we are saying, no they wont break, because we will wrap them up properly. He keeps going on about them being broken, we continue with they will be fine, let's just wrap them properly.

We had one thing that we weren't allowed to send...yup, as you can see below, it was a Hello Kitty cutlery set that I had bought for May because I thought it was cute. The reason for not being able to send this is that she is "famous" and therefore some sort of Chinese brand. We still aren't exactly sure why she couldn't be sent, but we needed some special ticket (like it was a bloody antique to certify where it had come from) and as we didn't have the ticket, Hello Kitty had to return home with us.

We finally get everything inspected and packed into the two boxes. The boxes get sealed up, THEN you have to fill out the customs declaration and mailing info. We have so many things in those boxes I can't remember what's even in them, so fill out the customs thing and hope for the best. The forms are 6 sheets in total, all one behind the other, so you have to write so hard that you almost rip the top sheet of paper so that the impression will be left behind on the last page. We fill out our address, my parents address, all the items, how much they cost, an alternative address incase our parcel can't be delivered etc etc. It's a long time, and that's before we even start writing on the boxes.

Then the young guy has to type all of this information into the computer, of course he can't make out all my writing, so I have to spell everything out to him then give him detailed descriptions as to what each thing was. Even though he saw everything before it was boxed up. He then can't understand why we are sending both boxes to the same address, but soon gets over this. We finally seem to be done, we've paid, the boxes have been stamped. This had taken a solid hour to get to this point. He walks the first box over to the wall where the other boxes are.....and just tosses it onto the ground. We look at him and say "THAT is how things get broken."

To illustrate the lack of care for parcels here, check out the photo below which is a care package my mum sent us. What the heck happened to this thing?? It took only 2 weeks to arrive, so obviously came by air, and it looks as though people have played football with it!!! It will be very interesting to see what state our packages are in by the time they get to Australia.

Food and stuff (Courtney)

2008-09-06T11:19:00.003+08:00

First, a big Happy Birthday and Happy Father's Day (and Easter and Christmas!) to my dad for Monday! We hope you have a great day and will be home soon to celebrate xxxxx

Now below, we have some random images of food and stuff from the glorious land of red.

China has a great new scheme of paying for plastic bags (why has this been so difficult to put into place in Australia?) As of the start of July, there was seemingly no more free plastic bags. Sadly, there is no incentive to not buy a plastic bag, as they cost about 2 cents generally. The "green" bag does seem to be catching on though, which I think is great. I actually saw an elderly man with a safeway bag recently?? Where did he get that? What I don't get though, is the prolification of plastic bags on odd items. For example, you go to the supermarket or a clothing store and you have to pay for a bag. Yet, if you go to a bakery or a fast food outlet, it seems they are doing their bit to make up for the other places. Everything comes in a plastic bag, as you can see above, even take away drinks come in plastic bags! We went to the movies ages ago, and they put our cardboard box of popcorn in a bag! We recently bought 4 donuts from a bakery. There were 5 bags in total! Where is the logic in this?

Above is some sort of bakery item. China is literally infested with bakeries, there are, without even thinking about actual numbers, at least 8 within a 10 minute walk the school. What amazes us though, is that for all of the products in the bakery, about 95% of them taste the same. We do however have these "green" cakes that we particularly like. The above is not one of them. We saw this green monstrosity in a new bakery and thought we would give it a go. Well, mass disappointment ensued once we had cut it in half only to discover the outer layer was pretty much rubber and it was full of beans. Beans have no place in a cake.

Above is some throat medicine we have used whilst in China. This stuff rocks, it's this thick syrup for your throat. What I love is the list of ingredients, it could not have a more unique list of ingredients.

And lastly, a giant grasshopper we found on the stairs outside our apartment. This guy was the size of a hand. Tell me he wouldn't look good on a stick being bbq-ed!

Ah, kiddies...(Courtney)

2008-09-04T16:36:00.002+08:00

So, almost week one down, three more to go. As Marcus has been saying, we have been back to teaching this week and lordie do you forget how tiring it can be!

This time round we are just teaching Senior 1 and Gifted 1, so about 4 classes less a week, yet still our rosters are spread across all days and at all times! But alas, this is not a problem. So far the Senior kids have been very manageable, I think in part to their English abilities being higher and also we as teachers have improved and know how to run a class from the very beginning this time. The kids seem happier to interact (there has been no mass giggle outbursts so far, which is a miracle in itself) and are a lot more confident in speaking. I've asked lots of them questions and there has been no major dramas in getting answers. They speak clearer and louder, which makes for a much easier class.

Of course, the gifted kiddies are just adorable as always, and it is when I think about them that I feel guilty for leaving in a few weeks time. I know the Seniors enjoy interacting with us but the gifted kids are just rapt to have us there, and it's hard to know we will be leaving them so soon in. We really will miss teaching their classes as they are just such a highlight of the week! Seriously, I think I could do any crappy job if I had 40 minutes of playtime with all these kids once a week. They have all been given English names by their teacher, so next week I am going to have them make some name plates so I can learn all their names. I expect there to be some interesting ones as always, especially when one of the little girls introduced herself as "Jason". We may have to have a bit of a chat about that.

We've been playing this True/False "game" with the classes this week (preface something as a game and it gets instant attention) which involves them learning things about us by guessing whether what we say is true or false. Then they do it in groups about themselves, then I ask them to tell me something about them so I can learn about them too. The gifted kids were hysterical at this because they are sooo competitive. And some are also very matter of fact. I had one boy stand up and say very succinctly "I like to read, build model aeroplanes and play chess." This was false, I guessed true. Then another little tacker said "I am 13 years old". Again I said true. Well, he was stoked as it was false, and he made quite the point of rubbing it in my face!! They make me laugh so much.

Also funny, was today walking to my afternoon class. A number of Senior 2 kids were making their way across to the science building, so I was saying hello to a number of my old students. A group of about 6 boys walked past and they all yelled out hello and waved to me. I really liked these guys, they were so cheeky, but they actually participated. I could rely on them to answer questions, and a couple of them would even volunteer to read or come up the front. This is a miracle in the Senior classes because they are all so awkward and self-conscious, but these kids enjoyed being the centre of attention. So as I passed them, I hear one scream out to me "Teacher, you are soooo sexy!!!" Right across the courtyard!! I laughed so much, turned back and gave them a wave which made them all fall about with laughter.

I like that some of them have that confidence and know that we are easy going and they can have a laugh with us. There is no way they would ever say something like that to their Chinese teachers!!!

Well, so far so good. (Marcus)

2008-09-03T21:29:00.000+08:00

Midway through the first week of our return to teaching and overall - so far so good.

I think we both forgot just how deceptively tiring teaching can be as we're both absolutely exhausted. Courtney's getting better - almost over her flu type virus and we're both in quite good moods. The anticipation of returning to Australia is slowly building in our minds and the students so far have turned out to be really quite pleasant.

Today I had my first class of the new 'gifted' kids and as usual they were adorable. The gifted kids if you cannot remember are the younger students - around 11-12 years old and they're smart(not simple!) As soon as I entered the classroom I was mobbed by them,

"Who are you?"
"What's your name?"
"Where are you from?"

Then at the end of class the usual...

"What's your telephone number?"
"Do you use a cellphone?"
"When will we see you again?"

They're just so damned cute! Cute and innocent and like kids before they descend into puberty, absolutely brimming with confidence.

I have three more classes for the week and then I think we'll hit TGI's for a western meal and some alcohol because you know, we still haven't celebrated coming home yet!

Oh by the way (Marcus)

2008-09-01T21:13:00.002+08:00

And we thought we had it bad over summer with mosquitoes...

I was reading over on Wuxilife, the local expat forum around here, someone was looking for the contact details for some exterminators because they are having 'issues' with rats. 'Issues' being, they are living on the 27th floor and are having to put out rat-traps every single night, killing at least 1-2 rats per night.

Now rat's aren't just an annoyance, they're disgusting disease-carrying vermin. I could not think of anything worse than having a plague of them in our building - give me mass mosquitoes any day!

Then again, how the hell are they getting up to the 27th floor? They must have superb climbing skills....

Speaking of rats, when we were walking through Lijiang at night, I glanced into one store and all the women in it suddenly sprang to the back of the shop. I saw a rat scurry across - movie-style. A man then attempted and failed to slay it with a broom-handle. Ahh rats...

Thank god it's over!!!! (Marcus)

2008-09-01T20:06:00.002+08:00

Well day 1 of teaching has come and gone and as the title of this post says..thank god! The anticipation of getting back in there in front of 55ish kids is just hardcore! We were both nervous as hell again - something we haven't really felt since we first arrived here and were truly dropped in the deep end of teaching.

It had been around 2 months since we have taught properly - long enough to almost completely forget how it was, long enough to take you back to square one. Walking into that classroom today took me right back to the start, BUT...this time round we had the leg up on the children.

Why?

Well today was their first day of school proper. Yeah they have been here prior, doing their cadet marching and various other classroom style things, but today was the start of the actual semester. These kids are new to this campus and their class make-ups are likewise, new. Of course there'll be new friends and so on in there, but not the clusters of 'cool kids' like we had when we first started here.

When we first started teaching, we were the newcomers. Not just to the school - it being the middle of their school year, but to the teaching role period. With absolutely no training we had to step in front of these classes of kids who had already had half a year to get to know each other and somehow still appear confident!

So while today was nerve-wracking, it only took around 2-3 minutes tops to settle down and get into things. The kids were all bright-eyed and attentive and their english was surprisingly better than we expected. These are possibly from a younger age-group than the ones previous(well they would be) and possibly started learning english a good year or two earlier.

There have been changes in Chinese schooling over the past few years in that students are by and large starting to learn english from a younger age. It is possible these new students are from that line - or it's possible these classes today were just flukey good! Either way, it is so good to get the first day over and done with. It's like day one of any job - the worst day.

I only had one class today to Courtney's two. Tomorrow we both have three, yay! At least the weather has cooled quite considerably.

And on that note - yes, it came the end of August/start of September and there's been literally an almost 10-15 degree change in the weather. It's now actually very pleasant. There is still a degree of humidity but it is much much much better. Our summer of hellish weather is thankfully over.

In China, today is day 1 of Autumn, whilst in Australia it's day 1 of Spring. We are happy that when we return home in early October, it will be just starting to warm up for us...ah sometimes you can win em all.

Back to teaching, woot! :( (Marcus)

2008-08-31T17:15:00.001+08:00

Well tomorrow marks our return to teaching. Mr Pan came over earlier and delivered our new teaching schedules. We found out recently that the other campus where we taught junior students has since been separated from Tian Yi so we will not be teaching them again - only Senior 1 and Gifted like we did last semester.

What this means is for the next four weeks we have a whopping 10 classes each per week. I have 8 x Senior 1, 2 x Gifted and Courtney 9 x Senior 1, 1 x Gifted. We have classes every day of the week with some days as being only the one class.

We will be kicking off with an introduction class and then just some basic games and activities for the remaining weeks(maybe even an easy video class!) seeing we're finishing up teaching on the 26th.

I don't know how I feel about returning to teach. I mean we haven't done it for 2 months or so, so it's like jumping back in the deep end again. I can't really say whether I enjoyed it or not for the first semester. It had it's perks I suppose, some of the relationships you form with the students is really enjoyable, but we have never really felt like part of the teaching environment here at the school.

As we have been saying since day 1, the other teachers have never made any effort to get to know us, and within the school we feel completely isolated and alone. I expected it to be different - completely different, when we came to China. I expected to be involved in considerable numbers of things, making friends left right and centre, but there has been none of that. We have been completely devoid of workmates and the like and well I am just glad we are only doing this for another four weeks then it is OUTTA HERE.

As an example of this - our classes tomorrow will be delayed by approximately two classes as being the first day of semester, the students have a 'meeting' with the parents and so on located at the sports stadium next door to our apartment. Now I assume this is the culmination of all their military cadet training over the past week or two - a final show to start the year off. These will be our students involved in this and as per usual, we're neither told what it is, what it's for, nor are we invited to attend. This is just one of many such scenarios.

They may have treated us well and have kept everything above board - ie wages, apartment issues and the like, but from a personal point of view, they have really failed in every way possible in my opinion. I will not miss working at this school other than the interactions with some of the students. The 'life' at this school, if you can call it that, just isn't there, at least, not that we have ever been allowed to be involved in.

Shangri-La (Courtney)

2008-08-30T14:32:00.010+08:00

Our last instalment in our China 2008 tour!

Shangri-La was one of the highlights, especially of the tour we did. It was one of those sleepy towns, which almost felt like a ski town, just a few main streets, a small town square...and that's about it! It was so tranquil, it kind of made me wish we could spend a couple of months in a town like this, just being away from it all.

Shangri-La used to be called Zhongdian, but it's name was changed after a book was written by some white guy about a lost paradise. The Chinese govn changed the named to Shangri-La to boost tourism. Whilst I'm sure tourism has definately increased as a result, it was still the quietest place we visited. It's about 3,500 above sea level and is surrounded by mountains. The air was pretty thin up there...so maybe that's why we found it so peaceful!

The hotel we stayed on was on this little street. Down the end of this road was the local square..

..which was BBQ heaven by day, dancing hotspot by night.

Look at that pitiful little face!

Whilst we had an afternoon snack of skewers, we also got involved in a very tense skewer sword fight with one of the local kids!

Nothing to see here...

Local Tibetan dinner, of course involving Yak Butter Tea. It was actually nowhere near as bad as we had imagined, even with my rather dubious face.

Local streets by night.

We stopped off at a local bar for a drink after dinner. Not quite sure who Gompo is, or why he needs a defence fund, but I like it!

The following day we headed to a Lamasery, the largest outside of Tibet. See those stairs? Well normally, these wouldn't pose much of a problem. But due to the altitude we were all wheezing and about to keel over by the time we got to the top.

Sadly the place was overrun with children beggars. We gave a couple of them a couple of coins, this little fella because I had taken his photo. Mind you, he tried to barter with me, which is just infuriating as these kids just should not be in that position.

Monks!

Don't try and take a photo near a yak. You get into trouble.

Another local street, they were so beautiful to wander around.

Some local ladies waiting for the music to start so they can get down and boogie! The local square turns into a dance area at night. What was fantastic about this was it was not a tourist thing, like so many other towns. It was just the locals, of all ages, dancing to the local music. This place had such a great community atmosphere. The crowd would grow as it got darker, to the point where the whole square was full, all moving in time to the songs.

Panda Fight! (Marcus)

2008-08-29T12:20:00.004+08:00

Yes finally after several weeks of being nagged by dear Courtney to upload them, here are some of the videos we took of well Panda's fighting! We were told that we were extremely lucky to see this as they normally only rouse for food, eat, then go back to sleep.

Well these three 3-4 year old Panda's were brawling before we got to them, for at least 20 minutes or so while we watched then continued as we left...all in their thick warm Panda suits in what was a really really hot and muggy day. I don't know what they put in their bamboo this day but sheesh they were feisty. They kind of reminded me of dogs fighting the way they were biting each others paws and other miscellaneous bits.

It seemed they had a clear game plan as far as what was going on. They were trying as hard as they could, with their clumsy unco Panda combat styles to push each other down the slope into the ditch that separated them from us. Several times they did a full slide down the slope landing with an unceremonious thud as someones head clocked the ground.

And down he goes!

Despite the disgusting humidity that day, and mosquitoes the size of something you would find in Jurassic Park, I was actually pretty impressed with the overall enclosures they kept the Panda's in. They were jungle thick and on the most part very large. Despite the air being thick with pollution(that looked like lovely mist if you forgot which country you were in for a few moments) all in all it was quite an impressive location. On top of this, to actually get to the Panda's, you had to walk through the grounds for what seemed like a good 10-15 minutes. They were way way way back from the noise of any cars and so on, which is a good thing. Now if they could just do something about that disgraceful air quality...

Tiger Leaping Gorge (Courtney)

2008-08-29T11:06:00.007+08:00

We really had no idea what Tiger Leaping Gorge would hold, water obviously, but we weren't too sure what else. We knew that you could spend a couple of days hiking the area and that once upon a time a tiger had supposedly jumped the gorge, but that was about it. I'm glad we really didn't know what to expect, as it was one of the most amazing things we have seen in China. The below wont really do it justice, but hopefully you get an idea of the sheer force of this water in the videos.

The Gorge is reputed to be the deepest in the world. We had imagined we would just be looking down on it, not realising we would walk along the side of the river. The water moved quite quickly, but it was very serene....here at least!

Hard to see in this pic, but along the top road there is a snaking queue of buses on the opposite side to us. This looked so horrible, each bus would have to wait, once you got to the front you were finally allowed off the bus to see the gorge before being driven away. We were very glad to be on the other side away from this.

All along the path were wonderful Chinglish signs. You had to walk right up against the rock wall, which initially I couldn't work out why...

...here's why.

If the walk got too tough though, in true Chinese style you could always get someone to do the hardwork for you!

Here we have the actual point where the tiger leaped as it was being chased. You can just see a bronze sculpture of a tiger on the right. You start to get an idea of how big this gorge is when you look at how small the pople on the left are. The water by now was moving faster than we could have ever anticipated, it was so strong. Of course, once we rounded the corner, we could never have imagined the sheer force of the water. Hopefully the two videos below give you a feel for the place!

Done and dusted (Marcus)

2008-08-28T14:10:00.004+08:00

If you take a look at Courtney's bag of late, you'd realise what has been on our minds recently...or this might be a direct result of 99.9% of Chinese people assuming we're American. For the record, NO WE ARE NOT AMERICAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess it was quite hard watching the Olympics and not feeling patriotic when the Chinese were whipped into a rabid frenzy of excitement over all their games achievements. Well done to them but we truly didn't share that joy. By the end of the games we were somewhat sick to death of seeing the Chinese team period. Every channel that broadcasted the games here was unfortunately only in Chinese, so we really missed out on commentary. It's not normally such a big thing, but we missed all the little backstories, he did this, she did that, he's going for his 3rd world record etc etc.

On top of that the only stuff they showed was Chinese events. Fair enough - in Australia all we see are Australian events(predominantly anyway). Diving, Table Tennis, Volleyball and Gymnastics..I am surprised they didn't invade my dreams. It was hard to tell which channels were broadcasting live, which were replays. The replays were a waste of time as you just know, China won that particular event. I did find a good way of looking at the countdown to an Aussie event on news.com.au then channel surfing until I saw what appeared to be that particular event - ie swimming.

Anyhow the real point of this post is to report that we have successfully negotiated our departure from the school and will be finishing up here on the 26th September. After a brief holiday in Shanghai - where we will be meeting with Mum whose coming over - we will hopefully bring her back to Wuxi for a few days - show her around - show her all the things we have been calling home for the past 6 months, then it's back home to the world of good indian, mexican, japanese and vietnamese cuisine.

We decided to teach for a further month which assists the school in finding new teachers. They wanted us to teach until November, where there are mid-semester exams, but we firmly stated we would only remain here one more month. It's time to go.

Courtney is again sick with some kind of flu where I am positive deep down she's really just a factory for phlegm. I don't think I have ever seen anyone blow their nose as often as her over the past few months. I am sure her sickness's are environment related. She was sick on the holiday with almost the same illness, and voila, she's got it again, some two weeks later. Being sick here is one way to get you down, and I feel for her. She's currently having a middle of the day nap as she barely slept last night, being unable to breathe properly and constantly coughing.

When we get home however, I think our lungs may just explode - what's that, fresh air?!?! It will be comparable to quitting smoking at any rate - there'll be much goodness to cough up; been there, done that.

Feeling the Love (Courtney)

2008-08-28T08:46:00.002+08:00

Firstly, an update on where we are at....

Yesterday we had a meeting with the principle and the head of English. We spoke for about an hour, it was very nerve racking but was such a relief to just get it all out in the open. We basically just spoke about how we feel in the district, how it's no longer culture shock etc, the isolation we feel, and the lack of interaction with the other teachers...all of which is affecting our experience. We said we hoped to be released early from our contract. Of course they came back with it's all culture shock, we have experienced that in when we have gone to western countries. Fair point we said, but this is almost 7 months in now, not 2 weeks or a month as they have travelled. Where we live is seriously getting to us, and the thought of being here for another 6 months just to fulfill a time obligation just no longer seems possible.

So as was to be expected, they countered with "We want you to see out the contract." We reiterated again our wishes, so then they came back with "This is not good we will have to speak to the education department." We said that's fine, we are happy to talk with them but we still aren't staying. Then they came back with "we respect your decision". So we got the point across eventually!

The school wants us to teach until November, which we really aren't prepared to do. We realise we have left them in a sticky situation, but it is the start of a new year, and prior to last semester the kids hadn't had foreign teachers before. Not only this but we are teaching new students this semester so there is no impact to their studies if we don't begin to teach. We truly don't see the point in starting to teach, only to disrupt their studies etc when we leave. The school's intention is to get new foreign teachers, so then the kids will have to get used to a new teacher, new teaching method mid term, which we can't see them benefiting from.

So to try and leave with some goodwill, we have decided to give them 4 weeks notice. This will see us through to the National Holiday, which is the same time Marcus' mum is coming to China (which eases a whole lotta guilt we were feeling about that!) This means we will teach for the 4 weeks, then go to Shanghai then return to home.

Return home...it sounds so good! We've absolutely no regrets in coming to China, we've had an amazing experience. But at the same time we have gotten everything out of that experience that we think we can. We've lived in a local area, learnt so much about ourselves teaching and have spent considerable time travelling around the country. Staying for another 6 months isn't going to enhance our experience at this point, it's just seeing us filling in time. By the time we return home we will have been gone for 8 months, which is a long time, and we are both really excited about what home has to hold for us.

Secondly, what a way to feel loved! Nothing like putting up a bit of a blogpost talking about how we want to come home etc to have you all whipped up into a frenzy. In the last couple of days we have gotten emails, texts, skype calls, you name it...all saying the same thing - Come Home. (And an offer of a room at Matt and Abby's incase the school kicked us out!!) These have been wonderful to receive and has helped us to cement our decision and to know we are doing the right thing.

Next stop Melbourne! Well, Shanghai, then Melbourne =)

The end is nigh? (Marcus)

2008-08-27T12:51:00.002+08:00

Possibly. We are looking into various options currently to possibly return home sooner than planned. Nothing has happened, nothing bad at any rate, though we feel we have reached a turning point in the whole venture in which we feel we would prefer to return home.

We have been in China long enough now that we don't feel like we are accomplishing anything further by being here. Our enjoyment of the place goes up and down and in reality we're spending more and more time just sitting around our apartment as we just plain and simple don't feel like going outside and being stared at anymore. It's not a nice feeling being the amusement source for every Chinese person in a 10km radius, I can tell you that much.

Funnily enough with the grand opening of the E-Mart(Korean Supermarket chain - think super big Target with a supermarket inside), we went up to explore it and despite the absolutely thousands of people there, all eyes were as per usual, on us.

We have enjoyed China, it is definitely an interesting place, but we feel that we have now outstayed our welcome and are focusing on other things.

We will see.

Lijiang (Courtney)

2008-08-27T11:45:00.008+08:00

Some pics of Lijiang...

The view from our hotel room (above and below).

Trying to take a nice shot of Marcus and this scallywag in the backgroup kept jumping around and dancing.

Traditiona Naxi women dancing in the town square. The white of their clothing represents heaven, the black represents earth.

I ended up buying one of these bells in Shangri-La. Still not sure how I'm going to get it through customs...considering the donger part is supposedly made of yak bone.

In the town square there was a large walkway full of hanging wishes. You walked underneath and ran your hands through them, jangling all the bells. It sounded great and I am sure either brought you luck or activiated the wishes.

Oh look! We found some kitties in our travels too. Sadly they were both tied up.

The streets of Lijiang are very difficult to capture at night. They are beautifully lit, giving the whole place a peaceful, warm glow.

And just for laughs. I was waiting for Marcus and this guy was doing everything to take a sneaky photo of me. Well well, you snooze you lose, as I whipped out the camera and captured him first!!

Dali (Courtney)

2008-08-25T20:00:00.007+08:00

Time to get a cuppa!

We never wear seatbelts in China. That's because taxis don't have them. However, this was a new low in our driving experience. What do you do when you have too many people for the van? Just pull out the kiddie camping chair! And no, that hair does not belong to me...it's our tour leader.

There wasn't just one, but two foreigner streets. The first foreigners in the area lived only on these streets.

Local snack - we were told it was a pancake made from milk. If you do the math you realise that means it is cheese. It was interesting.

Whilst Dali might have been completely geared for tourism it was still a very beautiful, tranquil town. All the streets had little canals with running water and everywhere you looked there were mountains in the distance. It was so nice to be away from the city.

There was shopping to be had everywhere in Dali! Sadly it was the same five shops just over and over again, but initially it looked like a shopping haven! These were very funky fish bags, but what really made me smile about these was there was a baby fish coin purse in each one.

Here we have a traditional Bai woman, selling her...uh, home concoction. This lady was fiesty! If she had a theme song it would be R-E-S-P-E-C-T! She was taking no crap from anyone. She spotted Marcus and made a beeline for him and literally would not take no for an answer.

So here is the ever obliging Marcus buying what dubiously looked like half a pound of crack. (In this town, it wouldn't have surprised me) Turns out it was some sort of chewing, flour covered...I don't know, but it wasn't flash.

She might have a bit of a cheeky grin but she is giving me a very firm wave off with her hand when she realised I was sneaking a photo! We have since seen her on a video of Dali (which also featured the illustrious massage centre) and can confirm she is one strong willed woman.

Never tire of the things-on-sticks and beer dinner.

We went to a local Bai market in the morning. Above are the local pizzas. The one at front with the glossy jam like stuff oozing out of it is a Rose Pizza...I'm drooling just the thought these.

Marcus indulging ;-)

Pretty tea cups.

Hmm, remind me how many children are killed and injured in car accidents every year in China? I absolutely hate seeing kids on scooters, it might look cute but it is recipe for disastor.

It's not hard to make food look good at a Chinese market.

A quick stopoff at a tie-dye workshop.

And then onto a local fishing village.

I thought it was hysterical to see so many donkeys everywhere (I just find donkeys funny) and the man with the beard thought it was hysterical that I wanted to take its photo. This little village was just full of friendly, smiley folk.

A boat trip out on Lake Er Hai...so lovely.

And finally, bath time! We found this really amusing because they had only soaped their heads and armpits...does the rest of the body not get smelly too?!

The Twilight Zone (Courtney)

2008-08-22T20:11:00.004+08:00

Just some shots of the weird and wonderful happenings that take place in doo do doo do...The Twilight Zone...

All week there has been cadet like training going on on the oval, we suspect with the new Senior 1 kids. I know we keep going on about the heat, but seriously, there could not be worse conditions to do this in. These poor kids. We have been woken every day this week by the sounds of hundreds of kids marching and yelling. And no, no, I don't mean we've been woken at the lazy hour of 10am or something...oh no, we're talking 6:30 here.

There is a lesson to be learnt from this picture, and it's not for the Chinese (as in - you don't put tomato and parsely as a garnish to chocolate cake). Oh no, the lesson is for the laowais. Never order anything in a western looking establishment, especially in Shanghai without checking the menu prices. Coffee and a glass of coke cost 60 yuan. We can eat dinner for that. The cake was free.

Oh my god! It's Hello Kitty heaven! You couldn't begin to imagine the products in this store...or the prices...but it was very amusing nonetheless.

In very exciting news...E-MART HAS OPENED!!! We checked it out today, and from what we could tell, fighting our way through the 20,000 odd people who were there, it's seriously good news! Above is the lovely man who drove us home in his little rickshaw/pedicab thing. We haven't taken these yet but for 5 yuan to get home, how could you refuse (and that was us being ripped off). We have however decided that said vehicles are never to be used at night. Above we are comfortably positioned on the footpath...things got a little more hairy as we crossed an intersection..at right angles. So yes, E-Mart has arrived and our lives have become all the easier. There is, amongst other things, a fully stocked gigantuon supermarket/department store thing along the lines of the horrifying Carrefour, which not only stocks western products but also has meat in fridges (oh the cleanliness!), wine, toiletries, and an enormous range of fruit and veg. Much also to our delight is the KFC and a Japanese Amijen Ramen (or whatever the name is) which caused unparalled happiness. I tried to take a sneaky video of the 43 checkouts (that isn't a typo) but needless to say the place is huge and absolutely CHAOTIC. I look forward to many incidences of trolley rage.

When we took Nick to our previous supermarket, we were a little disappointed as the place wasn't as jumping as normal. On the way out we spotted a bit of a crowd forming and figured we would go have a look. Well, what do you know, random snake charmer...and not just any old snakes but bags of COBRAS!!! Holy toledo! We took a pic and then departed as we weren't really wanting to hang around to see what was going to happen. Only in China would you walk a metre away from a freaking cobra at the market.

And finally, the real reason why this post is entitled "The Twilight Zone". On Monday in Shanghai we tracked down a bookshop. Whilst there we also happened upon a Japanese place and decided to sushi it up for lunch as sushi is a long lost dear friend to us. What ensued was basically a slapstick comedy put on for our amusment...or increasingly, for our frustration. Here is the classic example of Chinese "service"...and I don't just mean lost in translation type stuff here.

We sit down, order from the menu. We order: a lunch type plate thing that had an assortment of sushi, a plate of crab rolls and 2 sprites. Out comes the lunch plate, soon enough the crab rolls follow. We tuck in. No sprites arrive and we are both pretty thirsty and there wasn't any tea so we call over the waitress. Ask where are the sprites, she writes something on the dockets (when you eat here a docket of what you have ordered is left on the table and items are crossed off as they are brought to the table) and then goes and punches something into a computer.

Few minutes go by, no sprites. Call over waitress again, same thing. Writes something else then goes to the computer.

More minutes pass. In the meantime, a second plate of crab rolls arrive. We are still hungry so figure we will eat them. Call over waitress again, tell her not to bother with the sprites, we don't want them but could we please have the bill.

Bill is brought over, for pretty much double what we expected. We query this, only to get vague stares and then the waitress wanders away. Call over another waitress, get a menu, explain what we have eaten, that we didn't get the sprites etc. She prints a new bill, which is the one photographed above. So, we had 3 dishes all up, yet our bill states we had 10 dishes. Sigh. She wanders away. Another waitress arrives with another plate of crab rolls. We literally have to push her to get her to leave the table without putting the rolls down.

Call over another waitress to try and explain again that this is not our bill, because as far as we can tell, there are 6 sprites on that bill, when we only ordered two, which we never got. We decide it might be best to head to the counter at this point....which is when another waitress rocks up with a plate full of octopus tentacles! What the hell?! Stop bringing out the bloody food and sort out the bill!! She doesn't believe us either that we didn't order these and insisted they were ours.

After another 5 minutes of pointing out said dishes on the menu we finally get a sum that resemebles what lunch should have cost!

Inept. There's that word again!

The giant of Wuxi came..and went. (Marcus)

2008-08-22T12:24:00.008+08:00

In what became a lightning tour of China, Nick came and went in what felt like the blink of an eye. But we had fun! It was great to see him, as for the uninformed he has been living in the UK(for just over a year now), so every visit however small, is a treat.

We brought him with us from Shanghai to Wuxi, that was cooking in 38 degree heat. A school and local district tour was in order, and I was actually somewhat disappointed by the lack of staring! I think most people were too hot to be overly bothered - or my other theory is that with three of us, we have more numbers on our side so the starers become the miniority when it's small groups versus us.

Unlike the school, we are absolutely not proud of the giant golden apple. If you come visit us however, you WILL be photographed in front of it.

He did get some stares in KFC though when I returned to the table with my food and promptly dropped my large pepsi into his lap. LUCKY for him it bounced on his..crotch, then exploded on the floor. It could have been infinitely worse ;)

Wednesday was a day spent in the city. We took him for a quick meal of pizza at a new Papa John's restaurant in town, then all around the Nanchang(whatever it's called) Temple market - a good 'Chinesey' place to check out if you're only in town for one day. Here we browsed through the stalls when it started to rain..hard. Taking shelter in the middle of the market in what is quite a nice little pond area, we settled down to do some..GOLDFISH fishing. Yes that's right, we fished for goldfish.

I never thought I would actually do something so stupidly well stupid, but yes, I can now say I have fished for goldfish. It was a lot more challenging than I would have thought and I dare say addictive. It is highly likely I may be back there tomorrow at dawn trying my luck. The three of us sat down under the shelter of some large umbrella's(it was pouring at this stage) and drooped our tiny hooks into the ponds. It was looking grim until as per usual, I came through with the goods and hooked an absolute whopper! It must have been all of 5 cm or so! Courtney hooked the next one, leaving Nick questioningly his masculinity..fishless. Finally, after what felt like hours, Nick hooked a fish which I had to kick in the camera's macro lense to capture on film.

As it was still raining, we caught a cab to a German beer garden set in a traditional looking Chinese building/teahouse, then at night we headed off to TGI Fridays - what is frighteningly becoming our dinner destination of choice. Here many beers and cocktails were consumed whilst Nick picked up a fanboy; one of the TGI staff who we think was wanting Nick to go skateboarding with him.

After dinner we walked around the city, Nick happy to pick up the entire Bond movie series for a whopping $10.00 AUD or so and showed him some of the cooler shopping areas which are all nice and lit up.

Then it was home and well Thursday we just had a look around Decathalon(big sports shop) and headed out to Metro to grab some food but the weather could not have been more feral. The sun was potent as hell and the humidity was what you'd called textbook unbearable.

All in all it was a quick few days, but super damned awesome to spend some time with my brother and I'm already missing his consistently great company. We will do our absolute best to make it over to the UK and visit him next - though after our China venture, we're a tad broke.

One cool thing about Nick's visit that we didn't realize - what must seem completely abnormal to him, feels completely normal to us now. With someone like him here, completely new to the whole China experience, we suddenly get an idea at just how much we have settled into what used to feel like living on Mars. From the language barrier to be the only foreigners, it's strange to suddenly have a benchmark to compare ourselves to.

Safe travels back to Australia and then the UK, little(6'5") brother!

Nick doing what Nick does best. Here we introduced him to Mons(tm) at one of our favourite local restaurants. ** Yes yes I know what it's real name is, sheesh.

Booyah!

Goldfish fishing. At this point I was feeling pretty happy, as I didn't realize that the only photo that had been taken of me with my monster catch was on Nick's phone, and he wouldn't be able to get it off it for weeks!R%!%&()&!)(!!!!

Score! Courtney's catch was almost half a mouthful! Mmm Mmmh!!

This shots decieving. While it looks normal, we actually had the triple telescopic binocular lens attachment on the camera in order to see Nick's fish!

Nick with his fanboy, Hugh, behind him.

And last but not least, it's always a pleasure to be woken up at 7am in the morning by marching students shouting, YI ER SAN SU!!!!(1,2,3,4) first thing in the morning.

New Game (Courtney)

2008-08-22T10:20:00.001+08:00

We've devised a new game, the rules are simple...anyone can play.

It's called "Yawning on the Bus". Here's what you do...

Get on bus.

Yawn.

See how many other people around you yawn. These are all the people who have been taking sneaky peeks at you ;-)

I'd suggest trying it out on a tram, but it might not be as successful.

Special guest star blog post (Nick!)

2008-08-21T11:46:00.002+08:00

Well, this is my first blog and first time in China and wow, what an experience ! I have to admit that I was slightly jetlagged when I landed after a 12 hour flight and crossing 7 timezones and the heat and pace of the place really amazed me. The temperature is hot hot hot and it is that really humid, wet type of heat.

I jumped on the Maglev train from the airport and quickly was hammering into Shanghai at 430kmh (incredibly fast !) to meet Marcus and Courtney downtown. Great to see the boy and girl after way too long and they gave me a guided tour of a main shopping area of Shanghai. And then on a train and into Wuxi and the Tian yi school which I too am briefly calling atm. The apartment is lovely and the school grounds well manicured and spacious however the marching school cadets could be heard before they were seen and when they march past are quite a sight ! We had a brilliant chinese dinner down at the local and a few of the cold "mons" beers (the best beer I have ever tasted !). We spent yesterday in Wuxi which is an amazing town and I loved the temple market area with all the stalls and yeap, you guessed it, chinese temples, which looked great. After dark the place really lights up like a big Xmas tree and was an amazing sight to see.

Today I must depart after my short trip to Wuxi, but its been fantastic to see Marcus and Courtney and a very rewarding albeit brief stopover. A trip I wills always remember !

Look who we found!

2008-08-19T15:33:00.002+08:00

Lurking around the streets of Shanghai...

One sleep until... (Marcus)

2008-08-17T19:09:00.002+08:00

..Shanghai. Yep we're headed back there tomorrow night for our third visit - this time we're there to meet Nick(my brother for the uninformed!) who will be staying with us in Wuxi for two nights before continuing on back to Melbourne and finally back to the UK.

He should be greeted with the disgustingly hot and muggy weather we have been enjoying for the past oh two months straight.

As you can see by the past few posts, the weather has been a mixture been so so hot and muggy and absolutely storm central. The storms here are big and loud. I don't think I have ever seen so much lightning. The thunder even sounds different. There was one last night that went off when I was on the phone to Nick that was like a sonic boom explosion or something. The lightning lit up the night sky as bright as day while the roar of the thunder had the whole house shaking.

I heard some thunder the other day which literally sounded like a bomb had gone off, with this long drawn out reverb. We just narrowly missed being totally pissed on while we went out for dinner tonight. We had to take shelter in a Kedi - Kedi being Wuxi's equivalent to 7-11.

It seems this country is sometimes on a mission to annoy the crap out of us. Every day it finds a new way to come through with the goods. We were just sitting down watching the Men's tennis gold medal match on CCTV1 (China Central Television) - the channel which seems to broadcast the most live events (any other channel has basically china only events - and then only the events where China wins - over and over and over).

So the tennis is on, it's Nadal vs Gonzales, looks to be a great game, Courtney is really enjoying it as it's been the first tennis she's been able to watch all year - then 6-5 in the second set they...cut to a regular news program. They can't possibly continue to broadcast the game or anything. It must be 100% by the numbers.

Bleh.

Hello Kitty!

2008-08-16T12:23:00.006+08:00

Prior to coming to China, I had literally zero interest in Hello Kitty. Yeah, she's kinda cute but I never gave her much thought. Of course, since landing in the twilight zone, we have been assaulted with Hello Kitty in some way almost daily, so it was inevitable that she would work her way into my subconcious. I find myself liking her more and more and the kids are just nuts for her (yup, teenage boys included there). So it was with great amusment that I saw an article on the rise and popularity of Hello Kitty on The Age website this morning, which included this stellar photo...

Makes the wedding we attended look kinda lame...

I think what I love most is the range of products she features on. We aren't just talking stationery here, but cars, seat covers, linen, food, saucepans shaped like her head (I actually want one of these to make pancakes in), computer accessory, handbags...literally you name it. My friend Al recently sent me photos of AK-47s emblazoned with Hello Kitty, saying surely this couldn't be real. Think again!

This article then lead me to the hello kitty website and this brilliant blog detailing the tortured life of a man whose wife his hello kitty obsessed.

I can't wait to go to Japan!

Rain, rain, go away! (Courtney)

2008-08-16T11:36:00.005+08:00

The last couple of days have been very stormy with lots of heavy rain. This afternoon we went into the city and ended up staying for some dinner and drinks. As we were leaving it of course was raining quite heavily outside but we made it to the bus stop without too much drama. By the time we got off the bus it was pelting down. On top of this, just for added enjoyment, we seemed to have timed our 15 minute walk from the bus stop during a huge lightening storm. Hmm...so it was deemed that umbrellas were too dangerous and we would just have to hightail it home. As we walked it got heavier and HEAVIER, here's us looking like drowned rats....

Absolutely soaked!! The guards must have wondered what the heck we were doing as we sloshed our way through the school gate - mind you we were also carrying some groceries and two 5 litre bottles of water for the apartment!! A couple of months ago, we did a "seasons and weather" class with the junior kids. We had all these pics and were asking them to tell us which season they belonged too. The one with lightening and an umbrella, we had as being Winter, but all the kids yelled out Summer. We now understand why!

What does scary dark look like? (Courtney)

2008-08-15T12:46:00.003+08:00

The below shot was taken out our window at 4pm. I said to Marcus, "It's really scary dark outside." "What's scary dark?" he asked...

That is scary dark! And shortly followed a massive thunderstorm and lightening show which lasted on and off for about four hours. We don't get storms like that in Melbourne! I actually found myself wondering if we were unaware of some sort of tornado warning.

Lions and Tigers and PANDAS oh my!! (Courtney)

2008-08-14T11:43:00.006+08:00

Really just pandas.... They're cute, damn cute. Don't say we didn't warn you.

You had to see this one get down from here. Very ungraceful!

Breakfast!

Play fight time! Supposedly we were very luck to see them exerting so much energy. Normally it's eat and then back to sleep...but it was ALL on in the adult enclosure!

These little guys were just as cute, but didn't draw quite the same crowd...for example, I think we have about 100 shots of the giant pandas and about 5 shots of these guys.

Marcus will hit you up with some videos of the pandas in action...they might be too cute to watch!

Chengdu (Courtney)

2008-08-14T11:31:00.003+08:00

We went to a place called Wenshen Temple, which was your usual Chinese temple, gardens etc. Very tranquil and green.

In the middle was this lake just absolutely brimming with turtles! They were on every conceivable surface and were very amusing to watch.

We took refuge in the restaurant/teahouse when it started absolutely bucketing down. How's this for a serving of rice?!

The true gem of Chengdu...Peter's Tex Mex Restaurant! It was good..real good. Turns out there is another one in Shanghai, coincidentally we are off to Shanghai on Monday..

On our last day in Chengdu we travelled out to see Da Fo - the huge buddha. Quite an epic battle to actually get to the buddha, considering the weather. Along the way though we saw some beautiful scenery as we trudged up the mountain. Many smaller buddhas and some great temples.

Up the stairs to one of the buddhas, the handrails were completely covered in padlocks. I've read about this at various mountains where lovers inscribe their names on the padlocks, lock them then throw away the key to immortalise their love.

Ta da! It took us a good couple of hours but we finally found Da Fo. Regardless of how many photos I had seen of this buddha it was still just as impressive to see it up close.

Xi'an...land of...nothing really! (Courtney)

2008-08-13T13:54:00.008+08:00

On CCTV 9, the English language TV channel here, there is a never ending supply of uber crap ads, featuring basically every single town in China. They are horrible. And the worst part is, they are so ridiculously unrealistic. They are all tourism ads, voiced over by the handful of people who work at the station and they are so bad you could literally vomit if you saw too many of them in a row. Their cheesy jingles get stuck in your head for days. The best one I saw though, was at Chengdu railway station. Oh, I laughed so hard when I saw this complete piece of bullshit. If any of you have ever been to a railway station in China, you'll realise how farfetched my description of this ad is. Starts with some people getting out of a clean, completely intact taxi, which looks like all doors open (a miracle) and the taxi driver not only willingly opens the boots but helps you with your bags too. The people walk through a completely deserted entrance way, immediately into a spotless, bright station and put their two bags into the x-ray machine. In reality, you fight your way through a crowd of thousands, carrying everything they have ever owned (all in plastic bags, on bamboo poles etc) to get to the one tiny door that leads to one xray machine where the screen doesn't even work. They then are shown to the escalator by a friendly looking woman, who signs to them in sign language? The piece de resistance though, is when their train is announced, an orderly queue is formed by a handful of people (not the normal scrum to get to the front of the gate) and THEN, men in those golf cart things drive them down the platform to their carriage!!! Where is this magical paradise!!! On top of this, the entire station is spotless. I can tell you, the day we were at this station waiting, it had been heavily raining, and the TRENCH toilets had flooded. I saw things that no person ever needs to see.

So Marcus and I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of parody ads, because the ads on tv are ludicrous. I think Xi'an would be a good place to start.

Let's start at the beginning shall we....

Taxi driver of the year...does not go to any driver in Xi'an. I feel for taxi drivers, but here, they can all bite me. I will never go back to this city based purely on the taxi drivers alone. Lowlifes.

Xian..city of smog. The grey view from our hotel window. So inspiring.

Crappest meal eaten so far in China goes to this fantasyesque "restaurant". I ordered noodles...I still don't know what I was actually served. Please note the chain on the side of Marcus' chair - yup, they were swings.

The square across from the hotel turned into community centre come nightfall. Lots of people out and about, men making popcorn and the best bit...

Little kiddies having rollerblading lessons!

When the sun goes down, China really comes alive. One of the good things about China is that if there's a square or open space, you can almost be assured that all the local Chinese families will come out and do things from dancing to rollerskating, tai chi, excercises, singing, you name it. It is so utterly different to what we are like back home in Australia. Here is the centre fountain square area outside our hotel. It was still so hot at night and people were wading in the fountain itself while teens and kids of all ages rollerskated around it. It was very enjoyable walking around amongst all this, there was really a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere.

After two days pretty much holed up in the hotel, we had managed to recuperate enough belief in humanity to attempt to get to the Terracotta Warriors. It was a cinch getting there. However we were both in such foul moods that I have to say we didn't really find it the awe inspiring place you're supposed to. Well, that and you've seen it a hundred times on telly.

They were very interesting to see though, we marvelled at how their faces were all individual and the painstaking work that must go into unearthing them. I can't believe the pompousness of one man to build all of this for his afterlife. You sure hope it helped it.

Brilliant shot by Marcus, somehow making the archer look as though he is moving.

The following day we ventured out to the muslim quarter. Ho hum. Do I sound cynical? We searched for the mosque though, which was on some really beautiful grounds. We were there at one of the prayer times and saw a whole pile of eldery muslim men shuffling out of the mosque which gave a very serene feel to the place.

These little black and white slippers are worn by so many people, often poor and often tradies (oh the nightmares workcover would have in this country), I have one little boy in the Junior school who wears these. He's one of my faves so I always smile when I see these little shoes.

So after 4 days we were very eager to get out of the city. This was more difficult than we thought, and we ended up having to bribe a taxi driver to take us to the train station. Our train was delayed but we eventually got on board. Here is what I slept next to all night. Everytime we hit a bump or lurched I imagined this bowl of seeds and bourbon hitting me on the head.

The view from my bunk in the morning in our open carriage. The boy to the right shared the bunk with his mother..because you know, why would anyone spend money on comfort or the sanity of your cabinmates. Sigh. We dubbed him the most annoying child in China, but this was premature as we had yet to meet the child on our next train. This kid either ate with is mouth open (to the point where he was sitting there staring at me whilst slurping and eating and I got so annoyed I started making the same slopping face back him, noises and all, so loudly that he actually shut up for about a minute and a half. I think out of fear of the crazy white lady) or sat on the bed making noises. As in "daaah, daah" type noises for oooh, say 30 minutes at a time. I started to think he was simple, but no, he was just a shit. At least he slept through the night...

(Postscript hours later...the more I wrote about Xi'an, the more angsty I felt. I should point out that the above kid was actually bored out of his brain, considering his mum seemed to have brought along a text book for him to read and nothing else to entertain him for 15 hours. So in reality, he wasn't THAT bad.)

And now some funnies....

Next to the hotel was a dentist. Nothing like a bit of privacy!

Love the granny with her "freak.com" handbag. So long as it has English on it, it's cool. Doesn't actually matter what the English says.

Mmh..seafood AND porridge!

Best t-shirt ever. Sadly it was only a kids' size. If they had have had an adult one I would have bought it, because you know, I do feel happiness when I eat a potato.

And lastly, I nearly wet myself when I read this in the illustrious English newspaper "China Daily". I hope it brings you as much joy as it did me.

Beijing photo expose' part 2 (Marcus)

2008-08-12T16:52:00.010+08:00

These posts will give you a reason to safely avoid sitting down with us and going through our thousands of photos when we return home. You can say, "Oh it's ok I saw em on the blog!" Don't say we don't care!

This is also a reward for all those who have read every post to date - it's much much easier just to look at the pretty pictures. If you haven't read everything to date, STOP NOW!!! We know who you are!!

One of the best parts about the Temple of Heaven was the lovely lush gardens surrounding it. There were lots of elderly Chinese people here doing what elderly Chinese people do best: Singing, dancing, playing musical instruments etc. Notice how nice and green the grass is - no-one is allowed to walk on it. If they were? It'd be a completely different story. I really enjoyed strolling around these grounds. Other than the stifling heat it was enjoyable. There were a handful of extremely old, gnarled trees on the property which were also very interesting.

We have called the Temple of Heaven the Temple of Tourists and here's one of the reasons why. This is the main part of the temple grounds, where the Emperor would go to pray for a good harvest - this is the actual alter. In the centre is a raised dais where the Emperor himself would stand. The Emperor being the Emperor, the centre was reserved for him. As it radiates out, ministers and officials stood according to rank. The whole area is supposedly designed with accoustics in mind, so that whoever stood in the centre could be clearly heard from the surrounding areas. Here we have a long line of Chinese tourists queueing to stand where the Emperor stood. Of course when they got there they'd do a stupid Kung Fu pose or similar while getting their photograph taken. One thing Chinese tourists are not afraid to do is the absolutely anything even remotely novelty.

This was taken at a large and very popular flea market. The whole place was infested with an inconcievable number of goods for sale. While most of the stuff was exactly the same it was hard to comprehend just how much of it there was. Brushes like this are commonplace and you can find them absolutely everywhere. They are very photogenic and interesting but like everything, they really are a dime a dozen.

We are not completely sure what is in these, likely a type of milk tea which is popular all the way across China. In Yunnan province, these were Yak Yoghurt, which someone on our tour said was really good. We usually always try this kind of thing but didn't as they reuse the jars and well...they're not really a hygenic kind of people. I don't really care to drink out of something another Chinese person has(even if from a straw!) when the chance of it having been actually washed is slim.

This paddock was next door to the main Olympic venues(Bird's Nest/Water Cube etc). Those small hills - which actually looked like small hills initially, were actually camoflaged military vehicles. We could clearly make out several radar trucks etc. I have since read there is actually at least 2 anti-air missile batteries somewhere in there.

The central area of the Forbidden City. It was an impressive place but the sheer number of tourists and the extreme heat that day definitely took a lot away from the experience.

Here's something I have found all over China and really shits me. They have absolutely no clues when it comes to displaying historical artifacts. In a lot of the side rooms in the Forbidden City they had displays of artifacts/weapons/etc, normal deal, but in true Chinese style they were absolutely caked in dust. You couldn't go near them of course, they were cordoned off, but it looked like no-one had bothered to clean them in at least a few years. Sure they might have some great tourist attractions in the country, but they sure as hell don't know how to look after them. These instruments, and practically every other display were absolutely caked in dust. I have been in several temples and palace's here now where there's things like framed scrolls and paintings where they're ripped or warped in the frame, broken/chipped frames. You name it. It's like they put them up and forget about them. It really makes you wonder just where the price of entry money goes. We were reading an article about some Chinese artifacts being in I think it was England, and China wants them back. Pfft, they're better off in England, at least there they'll be looked after.

It's possibly just part of the Chinese culture. We see so many apartment buildings where they make elaborate gardens around them, then the gardens have just fallen into disrepair due to complete lack of maintenance. It's like they're all too happy to build things so it looks dazzling on opening day, and then that's it, what garden?

This is one of the many bronze cauldrons litterred around the Forbidden City that was used to hold water in case of fire. I photographed it as I liked the dragon's holding the handle - very similar to the door-knockers you see all over the city. I didn't realize until someone said later that these cauldrons were once covered in gold. The scraping pattern on them was actually done during the war when foreign(I believe British) soldiers scraped as much of it off as they could when they sacked the City.

The best view in town of the Forbidden City is actually not in the City itself, but next door in Jinshan park. The park costs only a measly 2rmb to get in and is a man-made hill created from the dirt excavated from the moat of the Forbidden City itself. From here you get an amazing 360 degree view of Beijing - and it's here where you realize just how big and sprawling the city actually is.

In the opposite direction of the Forbidden City, you can see the buildings extending out in a completely straight line, all the way to the Bell and Drum towers in the distance. This was right near where we stayed. The Bell Tower is visible in the top middle of this shot, and it's here where on the first day of the Olympics the American tourist was stabbed to death by some crazy Chinese guy who then leapt to his death. Lovely knowing that's the area we were every day! I found it highly interesting how the city was so squared off like this. Once upon a time the Beijing city walls would have been extending out beyond there. They were taken down when the city decided to build a subway station beneath where they stood. A shame really.

Here's a closer shot of the Bell tower where the murder took place the other day. It's a shame to think it happened as it's such a great area, surrounded by Hutongs. At no time did we ever feel anything but completely safe and happy here. This shot was taken from the roof of an Indian restaurant across the road. The curry was pretty average unfortunately :( One thing about everywhere in this area - absolutely every bar/cafe/restaurant has a rooftop sitting area or beer garden. It's just such a good place to stay if you visit Beijing in the warmer months.

And this was taken right on the wall of the Bell Tower of Murder! Ok I shouldn't call it that. Here sitting on teeny tiny seats at a teeny tiny table we had probably our most enjoyable meal in Beijing. The staple of beer and meat skewers. It was here we started talking with one of the locals and got quite plastered! Well I did anyway :) Courtney claims she was fine, pfft!

Jumping back to Jinshan park(next door to Forbidden City), here we see how the view alone is not worth it for the average Chinese visitor. Without this kind of thing it's just overly appealing. We were down the hill behind this setup when one of the Emperor's golden crown hat's randomly came bouncing down the rocks towards us, that was pretty amusing.

And again - the fish tunnel full of sea life just isn't enough, there has to be mermaids or something! I was actually surprised there were no submarines in there either.

By this point I was so bored with what turned out to be a very average aquarium that I started to just outright photograph the Chinese tourists themselves. As usual a tour group was in the tunnel and the blaring of the tour group leader's megaphone destroyed any peacefulness the tunnel might have provided.

This was probably my favourite rooftop area in Beijing. A little bar restaurant in amongst the Hutongs. It had the most cruisy awesome rooftop garden with views overlooking the tiled roofs of the Hutongs(Hutongs if you have forgotten are the very old courtyard style houses of older Beijing). While sitting here you could watch the sun go down with the surreal view of the Bell Tower in the background. Highly enjoyable. The woman who ran the place was super nice and was always playing really cuisy western music that just felt perfect. I miss this place!

Similar to the drum and bell towers of where we stayed is this tower located on the edge of Tian'Amen Square. I forget it's name but as the sun was going down all the bats came out to play. We have lots of bats that fly around the school grounds at dusk. They make funny little noises and seem to specifically check you out as they flap about overhead.

One of the guards that lined the square shortly before the flag lowering ceremony. In Beijing they looked prim and proper with their pressed uniforms and shiny shoes. In Wuxi they look as per above - just subtract the white belts and shiny shoes and add sneakers. There's lots of different types of Policemen in China, we cant really tell which are Police, everyday security guards or soldiers. All soldiers seem to have just one type of uniform which is 100% green camo while the police/guards seem to be all over. In Xi'an we saw a line of police/guards outside a nightclub instead of bouncers.

Took this as the guards marched in to start the ceremony. While I thought this photo looked very cool, the ceremony itself stunk! As we have posted earlier, we expected at least their national anthem and maybe a bit of song and dance! But no! There was nothing! Actually saying all that, I think some of the Chinese tourists expectations are starting to rub off on us.

Beijing's main shopping centre - Wangfujing street. This was litterally a strip of glowies surrounded by mostly nothing. The food streets were around here. All in all it wasnt really very good although it did have what has to be the best foreign language bookstore I have yet found in China. I wish it was in Wuxi instead!

This was the road we stayed on - a little further down. To the left was a small family run restaurant which served local food and was absolutely superb value. It was run by a mother and what had to be her 13 or 14 year old son, who took all the orders, served them then cleaned up afterwards. Many of the Hutong areas looked like this, and you could freely walk down them and get a real glimpse of local Beijing Chinese life. Whilst they are great looking areas with some really old and authentic looking buildings, the living conditions unfortunately are terrible. Most people seem to live in tiny one room places dotted around the alleyways.

This was our view of the Great Wall from the carpark far below. We had 3 hours to explore it...that included actually walking TO it and as you can see, it wasnt just across the way - it was a fair walk to get to it, let alone climb up to what you can see here.

One of the good things about the wall at Simatai was it was highly varied. Almost every section between the towers was different and interesting. Of course this is not the original wall - it has been rebuilt and restored but thankfully very tastefully done. So much so that it didn't look like it had been restored and really didn't detract from what was a really great day.

The wall itself was impressive, but the countryside surrounding it was equally so. In every direction you could see for miles and miles across the mountains. We were very lucky as it was a particularly clear day. On most days you'll not see even a quarter this far due to Beijing's terrible smog. Some of the mountains were extremely jagged - including some that the wall itself was built on. Why someone would want to build it there - or even, why someone would want to ATTACK it there, god only knows. When the Mongol's attacked and successfully took Beijing, how did they get past it? Heh, they simply rode around it.

And last but not least, just another view of the varied structures that made up the wall in Simatai.

That's it for Beijing! Next stop - our favourite*, Xi'an!!!

* not!

Hands up who wants to be a Chinese student!! (Marcus)

2008-08-11T16:29:00.002+08:00

While we were on holiday, I recieved the following email from one of my students, Charles. This student happens to be in one of the two Senior 1 gifted classes - class 1 or 2. To be in that class means you're up there amongst the smartest kids - hence the name gifted. Check this email out for an example of how bad the level of homework they are given on their 'holiday'.

Hi Marcus,
Now the summer vocation comes! But this summer will be very very busy for me. I wish I could finish my homework - we have 30 pages of Chinese, 30 pages of English, 30 pages of Physics, 30 pages of Chemistry, 10 pages of Politics, 10 pages of Biology, 10 pages of History,10 pages of geography and 20 Maths papers. It could be a piece of cake, but I have many other things to do.
Tomorrow I will be in Nanjing for the chemistry competition. And I'll e-mail you again after that.

yours

Charles

Now I don't know about you - but to me, that's just ridiculous. I thought this was perhaps just a China wide thing, but one of the Chinese girls on our recent tour said her schooling in Beijing(and she's not so old that her schooling would have been years and years ago) was nowhere near that bad - the amount of homework and things such as here, they start school at 6am, finish at 9pm and the best part, they get approximately 2 days a month. 2 days!!

Poor kids. They're being taught everything except how to be kids.

Home and hosed (Marcus)

2008-08-11T11:27:00.003+08:00

So finally in what feels like the blink of an eye we are back home in good ol Wuxi. It feels like a year has passed since we jumped on a sleeper train to Beijing, not just a measly four weeks. We saw a great deal of China but even still barely scratched the surface of what is truly a massive country.

Surprisingly, one of the things that came out of the trip for me was that when we compare it to everything else we've seen, Wuxi really isn't that bad. In fact, Wuxi is somewhat better than some of the other cities - who'd have thunk it.

The trip was highly enjoyable but like everything else in China had it's definite ups and downs. I am by no means a long-time traveller but I believe all lengthy trips can be as trying as they can be rewarding. Ours was no different.

We experienced all kinds of things from extreme tiredness from sleepless nights on ever bumping noisy sleeper trains to extreme heat and humidity. Courtney came down with a cold and I don't think I have ever seen anyone's nose run for as long! We're talking a nasal river here. We experienced the sometimes utterly frustrating nuisances of the Chinese people themselves, being confined in close quarters of busses and trains with them. We experienced the dizzying effects of altitude sickness that left us feeling light-headed and tired. On the last day, the altitude sickness dished me out another little gift and the toilet was my best friend for the entire day.

All in all it was a great experience. We saw so many different things. We met some of the different minority cultures of China and finally...finally escaped the smoggy cities and saw some very majestic mountainous countryside where the air was actually...amazingly, clear.

When we landed back in Wuxi it was 5pm in the afternoon and sunny. The sky was blue and slightly cloudy and the air quite possibly the clearest I have seen it to date. We could clearly see the buildings of the CBD and the mountain behind it from miles away. It really showed us that where we live is much closer to the city than we sometimes feel - think Hawthorn from Melbourne.

It's good to be back amongst our own things and to be able to just relax and do our own thing. Sure the next challenge is returning to teaching..erk! But we'll deal with that as it comes. For now I am done with travel - until the next adventure!

Nick will be coming over to visit in around a week and a half or so and it's going to be awesome showing him what we experience on a daily basis. We're both really looking forward to seeing him and showing him some of the cool stuff we've discovered along the way.

*edit - I have to say, one thing I had secretly hoped would be better when we returned was our shower - WRONG. It's as bad, if not worse than ever, waaaah :(

Beijing (Courtney)

2008-08-11T11:00:00.013+08:00

Some general pics....

" Rick-a-shaw? You want rick-a-shaw?! Hutong, very beautiful!" This is all we heard for a week. One time I was standing by myself, and I was approached by 5 different rickshaw drivers. Ended up telling one guy I lived there. He looked at me then said "Aaahh....you no need rick-a-shaw then!!" Cracked me up.

Has to be done.

Ribbon twirlers in the park.

This one because of the story. This was carved out of one piece of stone, a very long time ago. To transport it, they sprinkled water on to the streets of Beijing in winter to freeze over then slid this all the way to the Forbidden City along the ice.

Roof dragons.

Finally! Some art in China!

Some of the best food you'll ever eat in this country is cooked right here. Hole in the wall BBQ places, can't beat them!

The Great Wall, Simatai Section...

So steep!

Our attempt at a self portrait...fail.

Funny stuff....

The epitome of the Chinese man. Dark slacks, slip on dirty shoes, mobile or keys on belt....shirt rolled up to expose belly.

A bar/shop we went to...with a suspicious looking pile of drying greenery on the table.

Olympic madness continues, including rating the toilets. Only 3 stars for this one.

Is it just me or is there coins ALL over the ground?!

Clown fresh flowers were actually delivered by a clown! Sadly I didn't have the camera with me when I saw one of the clowns. This poor, lanky, downtrodden looking guy dressed as a clown...he looked positively miserable at the direction his life had taken.

Classic example of Chinese driving right here. We were originally on the other side but squeezed through. On the other side there is another car blocking everyone. No one stops or moves out of the way, they just keep inching forward, until everyone is so completely blocked there is no way out. So frustrating yet amusing to watch the sheer stupidity and "me, me, me!" attitude of all drivers.

And finally, food!

Mmh...meat and beer!

These are the sorts of things I'll miss about China. Little hole in the wall places selling all sorts of yummies.

Obligatory Peking Duck.

Be still my heart!

The Tour (Courtney)

2008-08-10T14:53:00.002+08:00

Since I wrote last, we have made our way from Chengdu, down to Yunnan province to join an Intrepid Travel tour. We spent 9 days travelling around the province before making our way home yesterday afternoon. And after 3 flights in 2 days I can safely say that it is nice to be home!

Yunnan is generally regarded as the most beautiful and picturesque of all of China, and it is easy to see why. It's green and open and most importantly, it's pretty clean - no smog!! Sounds like a miracle, but it's true. We didn't spend much time exploring Kunming, the capital, so instead I will try and do some brief (I'll try!) rundowns on our time in Dali, Lijiang, Tiger Leaping Gorge and Shangri-La.

DALI

Just like the artist, Dali was kind of surreal. I mean, how often can you say that in one day you see donkeys still pulling carts (one even navigating an intersection like it was the most natural thing in the world!), get asked by a 70 year old Bai minority woman if you want to buy "gunja" (her words) and then almost get robbed by deaf, mute massagers? Not that often hey! Maybe it was just the beginnings of being affected by the rising altitude, but Dali definately had a strange vibe.

Whilst Dali only has a population of approximately 100,000 you'd never know with the packs of Chinese tourists in every shop, cafe and street. The place is jumping, but it had a great atmosphere. Old Bai women stroll the streets with their baskets strapped to their heads, selling their wares on the side of the roads and little water canals trickle along the old streets. Whilst the "old" town has mostly been overhauled and now contains shop after shop selling the same things, it still had an old feel to it and you could easily wander the streets for hours. I think the best part of the town is that it is entirely surrounded by mountains which just gave this peaceful feel to the place. Strolling around in the afternoon you could start to feel that China cynicism start to wear off - we were no longer near a city, the air was clean and it wasn't 45 degrees. In fact, it was quite cool! For the first time in about 2 months I actually wore jeans...although I didn't know just how cold things were going to get as we continued travelling.

In the afternoon our group stopped for a drink at one of the local bars. Most of which have cashed in on the coolness of any association with Tibet, so they were all variously named "Tibet Bar", "Tibet Cafe", "Tibetan River Cafe" etc. The local Dali beer is a lady's beer, which was basically a cider (supposedly made from rice) infused with roses. Good lord it was top stuff, perfect for afternoon drinking! Sadly I came down with a heavy cold in Dali, so Rose Beer and I did not become very well acquainted. For dinner we headed our with Vivian and Shelley to a local bbq shop for our fave meal of skewers and beer. It's just such a winning combination! The streets at night were beautifully lit and we strolled back through the streets. It's one thing China can do really well, is lighting. Often it's just neon to the max, but in these old towns it's so tastefully done.

Unfortunatley I woke up feeling worse, but we did so much the next day that there was little time to think about how I was feeling! Our second day in Dali saw us take a tour around the Lake Erhai region. Basically a huge lake, I think China's 7th, and it was a highlight of our holiday. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the tour, I don't think I could say it was ultimately value for money. But one thing is for sure, even though I think Marcus and I could have easily travelled around by ourselves and probably for cheaper, there is no way we could have seen all that we saw this day at the lake. We all piled into a van driven by "River" (owner of one of the tibetan cafes) who would be our local guide for the day. River was fantastic and had a ton of local knowledge. We toured around the lake and to a couple of local villages, which would have been very difficult to navigate by ourselves. The roads around the villages were just unbelievably run down, it's remote country where things are carried by person and by donkey, and the rain made for some interesting driving. One section of road was so rough, we were all being thrown around and River just turns and looks at us with a grin on his face "See, free massage!!" he says. We all joked that we would need massages by the end of the day.

We went to a local market run by the ethnic minority the Bai. It is believed that the Bai people settled in the area around 4,000 years ago, and they are recognised by their ethnic clothing and headware. It made us laugh as everyone was thinking the market was exotic and we were kind of thinking it looked like the food market down the road from us! From there we headed to a local fishing village, basically full of old people going about their daily lives. Whilst it felt like we were intruding for a while, most people we encountered gave us big welcoming smiles so that feeling soon wore off. Another stop was at a local tie dye type "factory". Some beautiful fabrics and I ended up bargining for some placemats...which were probably the least traditional things in the building. But I loved that they were handmade and unique so they added to the weight of my pack!

One thing about Dali and the bus trip there, was the toilets. Jesus. I mean, we seem some shocking toilets in China, and there isn't all that many that phase me anymore (barring the freaking toilets at Xi'an and Chengdu train stations...holy moly) but Dali really outdid itself. After lunch I went to use the bathroom at the back of the restaurant, which turned out to be down the back of some buildings. You had to pay 1 yuan to use the toilet (normally if you have to pay it's .5 yuan) and god only knows why. I walked out of here wishing I knew how to demand my money back in Chinese. Absolute filth. It was putrid. The others all waited till the next stop after my report, but from what I hear the next one was even worse, I have no idea how. Not even the two native Chinese girls would use them, and that is saying something.

We were meant to catch a boat back across the lake after lunch to cut down on the travel time. However due to the heavy rain in the morning, there had been a landslide which had blocked the road so we had to drive all the way back. It was a long journey but I was happy to travel back through all the little villages along the way.

As Marcus mentioned in his post, we attempted to get massages that evening. You know how that turned out. I couldn't believe what I was seeing as they were motioning at my bag. One of those moments when your heart starts going and you think - we need to be getting out of here! Who knows what would have happened, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind they were about to attempt something. When the young guy realised I was watching him his face just dropped into pure panic. I figured it was better to get out of there before anything happened and we ended up in some sort of confrontation with these people. We mentioned it to our tour leader, Ammy, the next day and she is putting it into her trip notes for future trips as a warning. It has certainly made me think twice about the number of massages I've had here where I just dump my stuff on the floor - from now on I might just go there with some money in my pocket!

LIJIANG

The following afternoon we made our way to Lijiang. The tour we did is all about keeping costs down and using local transport etc so we travelled by public bus to our destinations. These weren't too bad, considering how much crap Chinese people bring with them and the amount of eating and slurping that goes on. We all went out for dinner that evening before walking around the town. Lijiang is larger than Dali and has been completely overrun by tourists. Most of the town was ruined in an earthquake in 1996 and has since been rebuilt. We stayed in the old town again, at a hotel that Intrepid hadn't used before. When Ammy asked us on the last night of the tour about the accommodation, we all said do not use this hotel again! It was utterly crap, looked lovely from the outside, but on the inside it was dirty and nothing worked. The bathrooms were dirty and mouldy and just stunk like sewer. Not to mention the shower being nuclear hot you couldn't even get wet under it!

Lijiang is know for the Naxi women, another minority. China has about 50 something minorities, 26 or so who live in the Yunnan province. They make up just under 10% of China's population, which initially you think, that's not much, but then you realise that is still almost 130 million people!! The Naxi are matrilineal and have some very different ways of living. For example, a lot of the women don't marry in the traditional sense. Marriages can be arranged for one night, and when long relationships end the women take control of property and children and do not accept support from the men. The men move into the women's families homes upon marriage and often return to their mother's houses during the day.

I skipped the morning activity so I could rest up some more as I was feeling pretty poorly by now. I met up with Marcus and the others just before lunch. Lijiang was again colder than Dali, so jumpers and scarves were now in order! Of course, having come from sweltering Wuxi, we weren't exactly prepared. Ended up buying big blanket/poncho thing and then had to buy socks too, much colder than expected! Ammy took me to a drugstore to get something for my nose and sinuses. Funnily they tried to sell me a bunch of pills which cost a whopping 1 yuan. 1 yuan!!! That's about 15 cents australian. Ammy read out the sideeffects which included - not being able to sleep, stomach like fire(?) and worringly urine like blood!!! Ah, thanks but no thanks! Ended up with some Chinese medicine, just this powdered tea stuff which seemed to help and didn't taste too bad either.

Lijiang is a really beautiful town, moreso if you kind of squint your eyes so you can't see the million other people you share the street with. It is overflowing with tourists and tour groups to the point where a lot of the charm is completely lost. But it really is beautiful. Old cobblestoned streets and laneways, surrounded by mountains, red lanters everywhere. The best part is the restaurants that are across the little canals - to enter them you have to cross the canals on this rickety old planks of wood that bend with each footstep. At night time it just came to life, lanterns everywhere, music...I really loved it, tourists and all! Everything had a warm glow to it and it was nice to wander along wrapped up in my big blanket thing.

All of the streets were lined with shops, seeminly they only have about 5 different types of shops about 1000 times over. So it gets all a bit tedious after a while. Marcus and I spent the afternoon the following day just wandering around and trying to get off the main areas to the more quite laneways. We stopped for some local tea at a cafe for a good rest in the afternoon and ended up buying the cd they were playing! It is music from Shangri-La (our next destination) and was a really great mix.

Yunnan is know for a dish called Over the Bridge Noodles, which I think originated in Lijiang. We ate them in Kunming and Lijiang, the Kunming ones being far superior. Basically you get a huge bowl of steaming broth, a big bowl of noodles and about 12 small dishes containing all sorts of things - raw eggs, tofu, sausage, pork, bacon, greens, chicken...lot of stuff! You mix it all in quickly to the boiling broth which cooks it all. So yummy and so filling, just what you want when you have a cold, a nice big bowl of soup!

TIGER LEAPING GORGE

On the way to our next destination we stopped at Tiger Leaping Gorge. Tiger Leaping Gorge is part of the Yangzi and is believed to be the deepest gorge in the world. I expected us to drive to a top point and kind of look down onto a rather tranquil gorge of river. I couldn't have been more wrong, and will save my thoughts on the gorge until we put up some photos as words simply will not describe the sheer awe of this place.

SHANGRI-LA

Also known as Zhongdian or Gyelthang to the Tibetans, Shangri-La was our last destination. I'm so glad it was last as it really was the most beautiful place I've seen so far in China. We wanted remote and remote is what we got. It's not every day you see a cow walk past you on the street, completely unattended! Shangri-La was so named after a book written by white guy talked about how fantastic the area was, so the government changed the name from Zhongdian to increase tourism. This has certainly worked, but for the most part Shangri-La was the most peaceful, natural place we visited. It sits at an altitude of 3,500 metres, which is pretty damn high, and all of us experienced varying levels of altitude sickness. Marcus and I were really not at all prepared for the tour, we had deliberately not done much reading on these areas, but a little more planning probably couldn't have hurt! We were the only two without medicine for alititude sickness, and if we ever went that high, or higher, again I would definately look into taking some. We both felt the affects of a lack of oxygen, making us very short of breath and somewhat light headed...and just odd feeling. I struggled because of my cold and Marcus was hit the next day with a very dodgy belly, even after we had flown back to Kunming which is a normal height.

Shangri-La had this feeling of a snow town. Just a few wide streets, little wooden buildings, stone streets and cosy looking places everywhere. So pictureseque! We stayed in a beautiful Tibetan hotel, the only drama being the lack of a bathroom door! As soon as we arrived Marcus and I hit the local square for some bbq skewers for an afternoon snack. We played a quick game of skewer sword fight with one of the local kids before we all headed out for orientation and group dinner. Ammy took us to a traditional Tibetan restaurant which was gorgeous inside, all dark wood and heavy curtain. I have to say, Tibetan food is an acquired taste, very heavy and stodgy, most dishes featuring yak or yak butter. Although I love yak!! We ate yak skewers then fried yak, and I think even a yak curry. Very tasty! We even tried yak butter tea, which was nowhere near as horrible as I have read. I'm not sure if it was a more remote version, as the next day we smelt a lot of it brewing in a Lamasry which smelt a lot more like I had expected. After dinner Marcus and I went for a wander before settling into a cool local bar for a drink. I tried a glass of the local red wine which I have to say was pretty good! About half way in though I suddenly felt very light headed, like I'd had about 4 glasses of wine, wihch was probably a combination of the cold and altitude.

The local square turns from skewer bbq heaven by day, into local dancing area by night. At night the square was alive with people of all ages joining in the traditional dancing. It was such a great thing to see, this wonderful community spirit, as a huge group of people all surged and swayed together. The older women look so weathered, yet so happy, and I think it must be because of the great community atmosphere. The people here were so friendly and happy looking, no one staring at us or anything like that. I found the whole place so relaxed and such a nice environment to be in, it made me want to spend the rest of our time in a more remote part of China where we aren't confronted by the general population on a daily basis. We couldn't have been further away from a big Chinese, faceless city and it was just perfect. Well, except for the fact it was so cold at night and it was themiddle of summer! But I really loved it though, such a relaxed place.

So that is that! We flew from Shangri-La to Kunming on Friday and I have never seen more security at an airport than at Shangri-La. Not sure if it is normally like that or if it was because it was the first day of the Olympics, but it was crazy! I had to spray my hairspray on my own arm to prove it wasn't something lethal. Shoes off, x-rays, patted down by staff, things unwrapped...just nuts. Then from Kunming we flew to Wuhan then Wuxi yesterday afternoon. As we walked through the school gates we ran into Raymen, of course! I was hoping we could have a few days at home without them realising we had returned.

What we have realised is how quickly things change in China. We notice things closing, opening, being built etc all the time but a month away from Wuxi has shown us how much changes. On a very happy note, before we left we noticed what appeared to be a shopping mall type building being built a block away from our local supermarket. Marcus joked that it would be finished by the time we returned, and I scoffed at this because it was basically still a concrete shell with the workmen sleeping indoors in their mosquito nets. Well, lo and behold, we passed it in the taxi last night and it's almost open!! The whole thing is basically finished, with stock in the windows. Could not believe it. Turns out it looks like a shopping mall, and it has an E-Mart. We have no idea what this is but we are hoping it is a department store/supermarket. And just to make Marcus a very happy boy there is also a KFC! We laughed so much, Dong Ting now has it's very own Ken Da Chi! The locals will be very happy has they all go nuts for KFC. So we will excitedly await the opening.

In the next few days we will hit you up with lots and lots of photos....we have about 1700 to pick from so stay tuned!

Shangri-la quickie! (Marcus)

2008-08-07T14:08:00.002+08:00

Quick hello from the tibetan town of Shangri-la. We're both feeling super tired from the altitude - tired and weird. It's a lovely little town. We're in this dingy little cafe getting Yunnan coffee - Yunnan being this province. In the corner of the room is a table full of guys and girls doing shots of...pepsi. Pepsi?! Nothing mixed with it that I can see, pouring straight from un-opened bottles?! One girl just downed a line of 5 shot glasses full of it...can't understand it.

We're flying back to Kunming first thing in the morning, then back to Wuxi by plane the day after. We're both keen to watch the Olympics opening ceremony as we've had nothing but Olympics here and well, it's about time they actually started! We need to find an online way to stream coverage somehow..if anyone knows of a good way - even if it requires paying for it, we're all ears!

Bye!

Yunnan Province, Kunming to Dali (Marcus)

2008-08-03T21:02:00.002+08:00

So I typed out a post the other day from Kunming about our trip from Chengdu to there and well, the interwebs swallowed it.

We are now in the town of Dali, well into our tour of Yunnan Province. There are actually two completely different sides to Dali - the 'new' Dali, which is just like every other chinese city out there, but smaller(population 1 million), and a few kilometres away, the original town called Old Dali. This place is absolutely magnificent, but before I talk about it, i'll briefly talk about how we got here.

The trip from Chengdu was long and quite difficult really. We were so so so glad to get out of the place as the weather was just horrible. The sweat factor was massive, us poor little Melbournites wilting under such high heat and humidity.

Our train cabin had a Chinese woman and her mother occupying the top bunks and as per usual, they had a three year old child with them also. You'd hardly know there were restrictions on birth in this country; there are kids absolutely _everywhere_. The father was also in there, but he had bought we think a cheaper bed in the hard sleeper cabin which adjoined ours.

They were nice enough, very limited english, but we didn't interact overly with them. Being locked in a cabin with a chinese family is about as in your face cultural difference as you can really get - and it makes everything difficult. We thought the kid might actually be of an age where he's above misbehaving/mucking around - but it goes to show how much we know, he was a shocker! If it could be switched on or moved or dropped or adjusted, he was all over it. Come 3:30am he was bawling his eyes out for a good 15 minutes. We were having enough trouble trying to sleep let alone this kid screaming at the top of his lungs.

At one point the whole family are eating this non-descript meat from a plastic bag. They're slurping the meat out then eating it making that slopping eat-with-your-mouth-open noise that just drives me batty. They had juice positively running down their mouths and hands. The father turns to me and offers me some - I declined and he smiled, saying, "Rabbit!" I then had an actual look at what they were eating, and sure enough, they were sucking the meat out of rabbit skulls. They had 4-5 rabbit skulls in their little bonepile. Ick!

So we arrived in Kunming completely and utterly tired. When we're that tired, our patience level is at an all-time low. We hailed a cab with relative success; only one complete fatass of a man stealing one from us, then our taxi driver firstly could understand Courtney's saying of the hotel, street and address, and even better, actually knew the hotel. He even gave us a free map along the way, score!

The hotel was gaudy beyond belief in true Chinese style. We didn't get to really see much of Kunming but what immediately stood out was the lack of pollution. Sure there was a little haze, but it was mostly very clear. This alone raised our spirits and had us walking around the local area checking it out.

By this stage we had checked in(painfully as always) and were absolutely starving. We wandered down the same street as the hotel and basically jumped into the nearest decent looking restaurant. Turns out this place was a huge indoor almost arena style place with tables arrayed in various positions to watch a stage. You see Yunnan province has a lot of China's minority cultures, and here was a place where they put on a stage show. We were given a seat up on a balconey and ordered food as we watched the single largest group of foreigners we've yet seen together in one place get ushered in to tables down below - front and centre for a show. Bonus! So the show came on and it was cheesy and felt like one of those cheap crappy shows you see in Australia where girls dance Rio de Janiro style - a la Rio's in Richmond. Crap as!

We met up with the tour group that night and were glad to find they're absolutely lovely people. Two older New Zealanders, a young asian american, a woman from Brisbane and another Intrepid tour guide who normally runs tours in Beijing but is on this as a sort of holiday. Our tour leader is also Chinese, this tiny girl who eats like a horse and is so superbly enthusiastic about shopping and a mega-tourist herself that she has us constantly cracking up. She's so cute and bubbly like a little girl, and keeps disappearing and returning to display all these things she's bought.

So for our first day we took the long distance bus from Kunming to Dali. The tour leader - Ammy(it's just Amy but she spells it with two M's) said it would be eight hours which had us kind of unhappy - considering all tour books say it's five hours. Turns out it was five hours or so - maybe a touch less, including a 30 minute lunch break. This was pretty funny as it was at a chinese 'fast food' restaurant which involved eating off trays identical to our school canteen, and even some of the same dishes! Ahh it feel's like it's been ten years since we've been in Wuxi.

Our hotel in Dali is fantastic. It's in this courtyard style hotel which winds all around a very peaceful garden. The old city of Dali has to be seen to be believed, it's absolutely beautiful. It's situated a few kilometeres away from Lake Erhai, China's 7th largest freshwater lake and around 120km drive around it. Behind the town is a large mountain range which almost constantly has clouds resting on the peaks.

The town itself has water working its way almost entirely through it. Beside almost every street is a fast running river of freshwater from the mountains. This has been harnessed into little waterfalls and rock gardens and you name it what else. I think it's this alone which gives the town magnificent character. There are some terrific old buildings and pagoda style towers and the like, but without the water it just wouldn't be the same.

Today we spent the entire day driving around lake Erhai. The minority people that live here are called the Bai(Bai meaning the colour white, in chinese). We made various stops in local villages, going through a market, a fishing village, taking a brief boat ride around a small island and the like. It was a wonderful experience. We got to see a very intimate, very real look at Chinese life in much smaller villages than we had seen before. The elderly Bai women all wear these smart looking blue suits which we will show photos of when we can.

That's all for now. I could go into infintessimal detail about what we've been doing but i'm way too tired.

We just had an interesting massage experience. Courtney has been coming down with a flu and I noticed they advertised various massages on this shop window, one being for 'cold and headache'. I have heard before massage is supposedly great when you're unwell - Mr Pan once was going to bring his sister over to massage a very sick Courtney. Anyhow this massage was off down this side alley in this little area, and rather than being done by blind people, was done by deaf and dumb people. If you wanted the massage harder or softer, you either made a particular hand gesture or pointed at a sign on the wall that had hard/soft and the relevant characters.

Was so far so good, the guy was working hard on my neck which was great as it's been sore as hell from all the bus travel when about 20 minutes into it Courtney suddenly says, "Marcus, I think we need to go, I feel sick." This alarmed me a little. We? I'm thinking and ask her, Do you need me to come look after you? To which she confirmed, and of course that was fine. I was worried about how she was feeling..but also feeling like there might have been a little more to it.

We get downstairs, we tell the main guy who can hear/speak/everything else that we're sorry, Courtney isnt feeling good, needs sleep, but we're happy to pay for the full hour as planned(40rmb each which wasnt too bad really), then making it clear to the deaf/dumb woman that what they were doing was fine, we get out of there.

I ask Courtney, "Are you ok??" and, "Was something dodgy going on?" to which she says, "Yes." Turns out the woman had walked over to lock the door - this I didn't think much of. Apparently, the guy massaging me was making motions to the woman massaging Courtney, pointing to her nearby handbag and making zipping motions. He then noticed Courtney was watching and pointed to his eyes to the other woman to let her know Courtney was watching. That's when Courtney said we're out of there - good call! VERY damned dodgy indeed, and the first real scam we've been a part of(that we're aware of) thus far.

By leaving in that manner and paying we avoided any trouble and were safely on our way at a small loss. Still, the 20 mins or so of massage was good and it was on my bad side of the neck. It makes me wonder though - was this these two people being opportunistic? This is a heavily touristed town, they often consider tourists as being outright dumb to things like that. Or was the owner of the massage place aware? I personally think they were being opportunistic, but I do not know. When we came down from the massage room to where other masseurs were waiting, an older woman came out and she seemed not happy with the two masseurs we had. I thought initially this might have been because we didn't like the massage and wanted to leave...or was it perhaps because she knew they'd either done something dodgy, OR rather, didn't care about the dodgy side, but moreso that they'd been busted? We'll never know.

Morale of the story is, never leave your bag out of eyesight/reach when being massaged!!

We're off to Lijiang tomorrow which is supposed to be an amazing albeit absolutely tourist infested city.

See you then!

Le Shan (Courtney)

2008-07-30T20:10:00.003+08:00

Firstly, at the bottom of my post make sure you read Marcus' latest - we have a new whiz bang blog feature...go us ;-)

Today is our last proper day in Chengdu, and as if to stick it to mother nature we decided to tackle Le Shan. Or should I say Da Fo, as Le Shan is the town. After a hearty breakfast we headed to the local bus station from where we would catch a long distance bus. We had no further information than that. Not a heck of a lot of planning on our behalf, but supposedly there would be a bus. Well there was a bus and we were on it before we knew it. The two hours passed relatively smoothly, given we had the two front seats and could see any impending doom directly in front of the bus. I have to say, when travelling by bus or taxi it is infinetly easier to be completely oblivious to what is happening on the roads! So the two front seats on the bus aren't ideal as the bus swerves and overtakes and narrowly avoids a thousand vehicles, as you know that when disastor strikes - you're heading straight through the windscreen!

Alas, arrived in one piece. However, we weren't there yet. Waiting on the side of the road was a guy with a van, telling people he would take us to Da Fo. For some reason we didn't question this at all, didn't ask cost, time nothing...just climbed in. Turns out it was an easy trip all for an extra 2 yuan which delivered us to the entrance about 15 minutes away. On the first bus at a toilet pit stop this young girl came up to us to say hello. She was a Canadian girl and was literally bursting at the seams to talk to us. Couldn't figure out why, but she said we were the first foreigners she had seen since arriving in China. I figured maybe she was travelling by herself and probably in need of conversation. As the bus continued we said we'd see her at the end. Well she also got into this van, with another young girl who was Chinese/Canadian. Turns out they were friends and were staying with her relatives (hence why the poor kid was probably dying to talk to us, she is probably losing her mind!) We ended up having lunch with them but made our own way after that as the Chinese/Canadian girl was a pain in the butt. Had that know it all attitude, even though I imagine we have spent more time in this country than she. Anyhoo, I am telling you all of this because she went on and ON about how it wasn't really hot and how the pollution wasn't bad blah blah blah. I can tell you, it is so damned stinking hot, regardless of where you are from. So we ran into these two girls at the head of the buddha, and this girl was STUFFED! Marcus and I both cracked up and tongue in cheek said "So, feeling the heat yet?" She didn't respond. I believe because she was panting so hard and clutching a railing for support ;-)

So off we went in search of the buddha. Da Fo is the tallest buddha in the world, he was carved out of a cliff face, taking decades and is more than 70m in height. I think we took the scenic route in trying to find him as we walked for 2 solid hours up and up and up some more moutainside. Just call me mountain goat. Couldn't even begin to tell you how many water bottles we went through and Marcus is out now trying to find some sports type drinks we can have before going to bed to rehydrate some more. Along the way though was beautiful scenery. It was peaceful and dotted all around the place were various buddhas, our favourites being those found in caves! Instant respite from the sun and heat.

Along the way we stumbled upon a fav Chinese pasttime....massive public arguments. God they love a good rumble, and don't care who hears them. For some unknown reason a young guy, about 30, was absoulutely going nuts at this old man, one of the bottle collectors. God only knows what had started this, but I couldn't imagine a thing this old man could have done to get this guy so enraged. Other people were yelling at the young guy, including a woman near us who was motioning towards us, I assume saying something like - hey, not in front of the tourists! Makes us look bad! But as the argument continued, this old guy barely saying a word, the young guy hit out with his fan (everyone carries fans here, including us!) splitting the man's garbage bag. The garbage bag was on its last legs but contained all the bottles this poor man had collected today. Well bottles went everywhere. I felt so sorry for this man, as he meekly got down on his knees and took off his t-shirt, trying to figure out if he could gather the bottles in his shirt as this young guy just smugly walked away. It's so ludicrously hot out, and here is this man being berrated by this guy. Surely it wasn't a battle worth fighting, whatever had happened.

Eventually we found Da Fo and he didn't disappoint. Such a huge thing, and so serene looking. Makes you wonder why anyone undertakes these sorts of things! By sheer fluke it was fairly quiet up there which gave us a good chance to take it all in.

It was't long after this that we headed off. We had no idea how we would get back to where the original bus had dropped us, but hoped there would be a pedicab or similar that could help us out. Well thankfully there was a bus at the exit! In true Chinese style though it didn't leave until full so we spent an extra hour sitting on the bus being assaulted by a Chinese dubbed version of Robbo Cop on the tv. I'm always surprised as there are never any other foreigners on these buses. They are such a good alternative to tours, cost a fraction of the price and are always easy to catch and identify. I really don't know why more people don't make use of them. The alternative from here was to hire a van, which would cost 650 rmb, regardless of how many people you had. So even if you had the maximum of 6 people, that's still over 100 yuan each. We did it in under that and it was all too easy. We even got to share the return ride home with possibly some sort of Chinese pop star. Well, he was uber Chinese cool looking and appeared to have an assistant answering his calls, so we figured maybe he was someone or just very demanding of his friends!

So that was our final day in Chengdu. I think this is a city that could really grow on you if you lived here. Unfortunately we have hit it at its summer peak. I think it could have a lot of charm, although it is so heavily polluted, it's really amazed us just how grey and heavy the sky is.

Tomorrow afternoon we leave for Kunming, with another llloooooonnnnggg train ride ahead of us. We get on the train at 3pm and don't get off until some time after 10am on Friday. But we are looking forward to joining the tour we have booked, and having someone else do all the organising for the next week and a half! It will make for a nice change just to be ferried around.

And now I need to go take a shower before the other people in the room ask me to leave.

Good night!

New! (Marcus)

2008-07-30T19:52:00.001+08:00

Look over here!! ----------------------------->

Now shows a list of recent comments made on any postings - woohoo excitement!

In other news, I think we're both melting, bring on Kunming and cooler weather!

Animal Farm (Marcus)

2008-07-29T16:54:00.002+08:00

So we didn't make it to see the massive Buddha today, instead opting to explore a local buddhist temple and surrounding streets. We both woke up feeling tired and dodgy after last night's margarita fun ;)

The Mexican restaurant was great! I had burritos then one of Courtney's Fajita's. Was a funny moment where one of the staff came up and awkwardly asked us how we were, like she was starstruck. We're like, "Yeah good!" and proceeded to have a bit of a chat. She said something about her boss...(the place is called Peter's Tex Mex Grill" and I interupted with, "Oh what nationality is your boss, Chinese or ?" thinking possibly American due to the type of food on offer, so she walks away without word and comes back with a framed article with a photo of her boss - who turns out to be Chinese and a write up of his story. Peter is obviously very successful - only 27 years old, 2 of these restaurants in Chengdu and one in both Beijing and Shanghai(the Shanghai one we will definitely hunt down when we're there next).

So she's standing there with the frame and I look past it to a smiling Chinese guy behind her beside a table who happens to be looking at us. I do a double take, look at picture, look at guy, say to her, "Um is that him there?" to which of course it was so we started having a chat with him and yeah, this stuff always happens here somehow! He turned out to be a really nice guy and while we couldn't work out exactly how he got into cooking American Tex Mex cuisine, we did ascertain he's been cooking for 10 years and well, now runs a very successful chain of what was really good quality Western food. Good times!

So one of the charms of the hostel we're staying; Sim's Cozy Guesthouse is the fact the garden areas which are full of ponds/waterfalls/plants are also home to a whole bunch of animal pets. There are 5-6 chickens that roam around, this tiny orange cat which we know is full sized as Courtney saw him in a photo a year ago and he is still the same size; just an inkling above kitten sized. Courtney can't walk past him without a pat and I wouldn't either if i wasn't damned allergicked...wahhh. So chickens, cat - then there's a pond full of goldfish/carp, another bowl with tropical fish, turtles, some massive frogs, 3 PIGS..or piglets - smallish black pigs, i don't know if they're fully grown or what, but they're cute in a piggy way. A big white rabbit, a guinea pig, you bloody name it, it's here!

The place has a really cruisy happy vibe and I think that completely attributes to the owners, Sim and Maki. Sim looks like a really chilled kind of guy. We haven't really spoken to him but you can just tell. He's Singaporean whilst Maki is Japanese. I think Maki is responsible for a large part of the menu they sell here - which happens to be super cheap super damned tasty food. They sell these huge brownies in the bar area that really help me deal with this weather.

And the weather? It remains stinking hot. We explored this temple today but both felt completely disgusting throughout. We were out for four hours and were super relived to get back to the hostel and it's loving air-conditioning.

There's a term in China, labling three cities as the three furnaces of China. We knew about these before coming and did NOT want to live in them - well it turns out we live in the same province as one, and are holidaying right beside the other. One is Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province(where Wuxi is), another is Chongching, which is China's most populated city and a few hours away from Chengdu. Chongching is also where the recent earthquake disaster occured. Wuhan is the last of the three and I don't know much about it other than the fact it's in central China somewhere.

Chengdu is a nice city but mostly spoilt by it's pollution. One thing we have really learned as we have travelled around that Wuxi really isnt too bad afterall. Seeing other cities and what they offer - well Wuxi offers them too and I guess that now we are so familar with Wuxi, it's sort of like our home away from home. Doesn't change the fact that in our district, Xishan or DongTing or whatever it's called(we can never be sure), there's still stuffall to do, but there you go. Wuxi isn't too bad afterall.

I am really looking forward to leaving Chengdu for no other reason than the weather is really difficult to deal with, BUT I have to outright put it on the reccomended destination list for no other reason than the Panda visit was that good. Was just looking over the photos and I swear, you will not see anything cuter EVER! The guide who took us said we were actually lucky seeing them so active and playful. I kind of expected it to be like Lions in the Melbourne Zoo - you always want to see them sort of moving around and doing stuff but they never were - they were always asleep against the fence that made them hardest to see. Initially that's what the Panda's were, and that's what I expected to leave with, but oh no! And how's that for a total sidetrack!

Tomorrow we'll retry for this 70 metre buddha and perhaps dance on it's toenail. The day after we're off again on our way into Southern China and Kunming - hopefully to clearer skies. We cant wait for that.

See you!

Pandtastic! (Marcus)

2008-07-28T16:42:00.007+08:00

So we have been in Chengdu a few days now and it really doesn't feel like we have seen much at all. We have been spending quite considerable time here at the hostel and while we are enjoying ourselves, feel like we've explored less than we have the other cities to date. Why? Easy answer - the weather - it is bloody hot!

When we arrived we had a bit of a climate transition similar to when we arrived in Cairns early last year. In Cairns as soon as we stepped off the plane we were hit by a wall of heat and humidity - and Chengdu was no different. While it's maximum temperature is probably less than somewhere like Cairns, the humidity is waaay up there. We were picked up by someone from the hostel and had to wait around for 5-10 minutes while she looked for someone else. It was that kind of unbearable feeling of - oh my god I gotta get out of this sun!

The sun here when it comes out is absolutely potent. While it's hot most of the time, it's also hazey/cloudy. You can't often tell what the sky is doing as the sky is of course so polluted. We were both surprised I think by how polluted Chengdu is. I think we were both expecting this green city full of teahouses and clearer skies; wrong!

While it's not a bad city - definitely a better vibe than Xi'an, it's certainly just another Chinese city. It is heavy in bicycle and scooter traffic(like Wuxi) and all the roads have metal seperators between the road proper and the scooter/bike lanes. I guess it got to a point where the amount of bikes/scooters that were freely moving into/overflowing into the main roads was causing too many accidents. It's a good idea actually as it does seem to keep the two types of vehicles very seperate.

In Wuxi it's a free for all. I actually feel for the taxi drivers at times - they would have to be the most patient and/or ruthless people in the planet. The amount of times scooters/pedestrians/bikes just randomly go across the road in any direction is an absolute shocker. The longer we spend in this country however the more we come to the agreement that they just should NOT have cars. They do NOT know how to drive - no matter what the vehicle is. You seem some of the most ridiculously stupid driving here - feats of absolute stupidity.

So anyway today we set off on a half-day tour via the hostel to what was easily one of the highlights of our trip to China yet...to see the Panda Breeding Base! It was located approximately 15 minutes away by car in what turned out to be a surprisingly large and dense environment. The grounds were very reminiscent of what the Panda's natural environment might have looked like and i was very impressed with how realistic the individual enclosures were. Of course it's a pity that the haze throughout the place was actually smog - not some kind of gentle mountain mist. Silly they have a place like this in such a smoggy area really; it can't be good for such an endangered animal having to breathe it.

We started off by seeing absolute newborns and they were amazingly small. Little pink things that looked more like rats than baby panda's. We watched a video at the place where when a Panda gives birth, it happens so fast the mother doesn't even know it's happened, it's just like walking along then hey blammo out the back falls a baby like a..well like a number two :) The Panda mothers then don't even realize what it is and start batting it around...crazy stuff. The keepers have to get in there and get the baby out before it's potentially harmed. Supposedly this is common on first pregancies but on the 2nd they're very motherly. The craziness of that first birth kind of fits the whole Chinese theme in my opinion ;)

After this we saw a large enclosure with around 7-8 babies...well small Panda's, around 1 year in age. These guys were what we expected - non-moving, hanging in tree's and structures at all different angles...asleep. The next enclosure had 2-3 larger ones, one that actually came right up to the fence but moved away when a stupid chinese woman came yelling at the top of her lungs in excitement..right beside one of the MANY 'Speak Quietly' signs. All 6 people of our group shooshed her...sheesh.

Actually some of the signs around the place cracked us up, one was like, "Wildlife is not to be used for food!" ..haha yeah gogo China!

So then came the definite highlight, out came a keeper with a big jar of apple pieces. Over the course of the next 20 minutes they proceeded to feed them and this was quite possibly some of the cutest stuff i have ever witnessed in my life. It was so cute that I felt completely cuted out and just started walking around hugging people. Ok that's not true, but it was damned cute!

Initially only one of these youngsters was roused by the food, the others were so uber lazy they had to be majorly coaxed out. The keeper would give this first little fella a piece of apple and it would take it, hold it to the side of its mouth then plonk down on its backside. They are so utterly lazy! When it had finished, it'd immediately pick up and plod its way in the direction of the keeper to get another piece then immediately back down on its rear. It was so so so cute. We took a heap of photos and videos, a pity I can't upload a few from this virusey computer.

One by one more of the Panda's would make their way out until finally all of them were out. As they climb down from things it's in about as unmajestic a way possible, they slip around, grab onto the top of the ladder/platform, plonk their butt down, repeat until they're at the bottom - absolute classic. Graceful these animals are not! They are so amazingly lazy, but hell, I wasn't feeling so energetic in the sun and humidity either!

There was one instance when 5-6 of them were all lined up on a log and that was the absolute pinnacle of cuteness. We got some good shots of this. Wonderful stuff.

We moved on and witnessed 3 larger Panda's in an all in playfight which lasted for absolutely ages which involved them rumbling like playful dogs, trying to push each other down the front of the enclosure into the pit dividing Panda from Humans. They kept getting shoved down where they would slide through the foilage, bang their head on the ground then climb back up and repeat it. Very adorable and surprising at how much energy these sleepy beasts would have expelled in the sweating heat. While we watched these we had the pleasant experience of being bitten by mosquitoes the size of 10 cent coins.

Beyond this we saw some Red Panda's, which were cool in their cat/lion cub like way but not as impressive as the regular Pandas. Then of course we had to watch a movie about Panda's and go through what was the crappest museum display I have ever seen. Complete random crap! It was just a collection of random photos/teeth/panda cock in a jar/books with odd captions then this mind-bogglingly weird stuffed animal display where a Panda sat a few feet away from a sabre-toothed tiger attacking the world's most out of proportioned deer thing.

All in all a good day. I was glad to get home and get cooled down - still a little paranoid after suffering some heat exhaustion effects. We're off to get Mexican tonight and are excited as hell. Really really miss good mexican and indian food. Tomorrow we're going to try and take the two hour trip out to see a giant buddha carved into a rockface in a place called Leshan.

Later!

So what did you do today? (Courtney)

2008-07-28T16:36:00.002+08:00

Oh, you know, just hung out with 15 of my closest panda buddies! Yup, that's right, today we headed out to one of the panda reserves in Chengdu to experience one of the compulsory activities in this province. I can safely say that it was probably the highlight of the trip to date! They are so cute I want to be a panda keeper when I grow up. I wish we could put up some shots, but they're so cute I don't think any of you could handle it.

So, Chengdu. Damn it's hot. I mean, it's really unbelievably hot. And humid. There is a guy on the phone near me talking to a friend and he's going on about the heat. It's like this all consuming heaviness, making it near impossible to want to do anything! Our small outings have been planned around various buildings we can go to that have air conditioning. In my mind, Chengdu was going to be this magical paradise, full of great food, greenery, cool streets...basically a chinese utopia. Not all is what we had hoped for though, which seems to be a continuing theme in this country. We were joking the other day that if you got too negative you could really view this country as an unfortunate series of disappointments! It holds so much promise yet delivers on so little!

Not all is lost though. Chengdu just remains another city along our journey. It's as smoggy as the best of them, just as chaotic, but it does have a laid back feel to it that we had read about and been told about. The pollution in this country is just so disappointing, it could be so beautiful but it's as though it's doing it's damned best to destroy itself. You really can't appreciate places when they are covered in a layer of pollution, and the haze is so bad you can't make out the buildings at the end of the road. Living here has been compared to the equivalent of smoking a packet of cigarettes a day, and I can see why!

We got talking to a French couple today who live in Harbin, which is waaaay up north. We are so interested in seeing Harbin but it's funny when you speak to people who live here, they just confirm everything you experience. From what we can now gather, Harbin is just the same as the others! Possibly with even less to draw you to it! That doesn't mean we wont still see it, but as we travel along, we are certainly arriving in each destination with more and more realism and less optimism!

The hostel we are staying in is fantastic, barring a slightly out of the way location (they moved recently, we didn't know!) The initial room we were given was just uninhabitable, so we asked to move, which i've never done, but they happily let us switch rooms after viewing a couple of options. Things have been much more comfortable since, we have a cosy room overlooking the garden, rather than this dirty, run down room overlooking a 6 lane road! But seriously, the hostel is great. They have fantastic service, were able to assist us with our next train tickets and the restaurant/bar area is brilliant for a hostel. So much room and seating, there are little nooks everywhere, both inside and out. We've made quite a bit of use of the food served here, mostly as Marcus has been a bit under the weather the last day or two.

Saturday we hit the streets in our normal style. The weather was so hot, yet before we knew it we had somehow been out for 3 hours...hence our exhaustion! The breaking of our umbrella signalled the end of our exploring so it was back to the hostel. Within a couple of hours Marcus started feeling really unwell, so a night in was decided. I ended up going to the bar for a little while to eat and read a magazine to fill in some time. We think Marcus might have had a bit of heat exhaustion as he was a bit out of it and appeared dehydrated. Whilst he was feeling better come Sunday it was decided he should have a quiet day otherwise he would end up in the same state if not worse. I'm not kidding when I say it is HOT. We realised that on Saturday we had probably under a litre of water each all day, which I think probably contributed the most to why Marcus felt so unwell.

So the prospect of hanging around the hostel all day on Sunday didn't overly appeal to me. I figured Marcus was ok, so I would head out for a bit to a market. All seemed to be going well, me out and about in a new city, told the taxi driver where I wanted to go, amazingly he appeared to understand my Chinese! Wonders never cease. Until of course we got to the destination, and on looking out the window I realised I had no idea where I was, what street I was on, nothing. (note to my mother - nothing to worry about, I was in the middle of the city!) Chengdu is renowned for its poor street naming and numbering, when you couple that with my absolute inability to follow directions or know where I am at any given point, it's a recipe for disastor! Streets change names constantly, so it becomes easier to try and trace your way via landmarks. I was in search of a market that supposedly sold seafood, animals, plants, birds etc. I wanted to see something other than the same old "antiques" and souveniers. Well turns out I was actually at the right spot (go me and my poor Chinese abilities!) but of course, as my luck with markets go, it was just the same old crap you can see anywhere! Funnily though, on one of the streets I walked, there was shop after shop selling turtles in tanks. As I walked I spotted one of the shop keepers sitting on a low stool with her feet dangling in one of the tanks, I assume to cool them off! Made me laugh.

By Sunday night Marcus was on the mend so we headed out for some authentic Sichuan food. The province of Sichuan is known for its spicy food, mostly two dishes - hotpot and mapo dofu. We really want to eat hotpot whilst we are here, but the weather isn't really conducive at the moment! So we headed out to one of the "touristy" restaurants that we have read about to try their famous Mapo dofu dish. Touristy my foot! The restaurant we went to was as local as any that we eat at in Wuxi, making us the centre of attention..but hey, that's nothing we aren't used to! We did get the dish though, which is basically tofu in chilli oil with spring onions and minced pork/chilli/ginger type paste on top. My god it was good! Pretty damned hot but delicious. So delicious in fact that when the young waiter served us he said with a cheeky tone "It is so delicious!" Which made us laugh out loud as it reminded us of our students - they all LOVE saying the word "delicious". (Seemingly my kids also enjoy saying the word "naked" and will try and work it into any class.)

Up next on our food hit list is....drum roll....Mexican! It's been a long time since we have had Mexican food (well, really any nationalities food other than Chinese is a rare event) and we are both uber excited. There is a tex mex restaurant somewhere within the city and we are off soon to find it! It's going to be margaritas and fajitas all round!

Tomorrow we are going to head out to Le Shan, which is an area about 2 hours bus ride from here. There is the world's largest buddha, Da Fo, which was carved into a cliff face. Yet again I am expecting tranquility and a clear view...but in reality I know there will be a million people there and we'll be lucky if we even catch a glimpse! It's supposed to be pretty spectacular though, he stands over 70 metres tall, and from what I hear you could picnic on his big toe ;-) Can't beat that.

I hear tequila calling!

Quickie! (Marcus)

2008-07-26T16:55:00.003+08:00

I forgot to mention in the Xi'an to Chengdu post - about 5-6am when it was starting to become full light, Courtney and I were peering out the window as naturally sleep on the train is completely evasive.

What we saw was some absolutely beautiful landscape. One of the things i have loved about going between places by train is we have been able to see some really different landscape. Outside of Beijing some interesting farmland - outside of Xi'an, lots of layered farmland - but different - a lot browner/a lot more dirt.

Between Xi'an -> Chengdu - man we passed through some awesome Mountains with a really large brown river flowing in the valley between them. The train tracks seemed to follow this valley from start to finish - located on the base of these rocky mountains. It was just so beautiful and interesting to watch. We tried to snap off a few photographs but they didn't come out very well.

The train kept passing through tunnels through the mountains themselves but we could mostly just follow the course of the river - both of us watching with somewhat awe.

It was just so interesting. All the way along it were levels of crops, farmers steering oxen like animals, small houses perched along the hillsides - at one place a large rockslide where the rock was mostly white but with a deep red colour through the middle, almost as if it had been painted.

I have absolutely no idea where this place was, nor the rivers name, but it was fantastic being able to just randomly see it.

Spot the tourists! (Marcus & Courtney)

2008-07-26T15:23:00.013+08:00

First and foremost - apologies for the mammoth essays and walls of text - they're not exactly easy on the casual eye. Here are some random shots of along the way. Even our sweat is sweating in Chengdu - it's hothothot!

Enjoy!

Eating what turned out to be very un-curry tasting curry on the rooftop with the Two Towers(tm) in the backround (Bell on the left, Drum on the right).

Hiking up to the wall to then start the climb reminded us how fit we are...aka not. It was high! See that little path way down below? Well we had to start from way back there...They only gave us 3 hours to climb on the wall itself, half of that was just making our way TO it!

If you don't know where we are, well...

The Temple of Heaven, also known as the Temple of 2 Million Tourists.

It had to be done.

What did you think of the flag lowering ceremony at Tian Amen after waiting forever for it to start only to find out it was in fact just a lowering of the flag with a few marching guardsmen? No fireworks! No music and national anthems! Not even any paddle boats, sheesh!!

The Forbidden City.

After each drink we became bester and bester bestest friends.

Grapes on a Stick covered with toffee - only bested by Strawberry on a stick with toffee, you have no idea how good these things were..the grapes...holy crap, sweestest grapes I have ever eaten. *pantpant*

Me overlooking approximately the same number of average tourists found at any tourist attraction in China except these were made from terracotta.

We love grown adults in pyjama's in public - just love it. This was pre-train at the station. We saw im in the morning as well, kicking along in the same get-up. Like cat's, we like to catch as many of these on camera as possible.

Random girl in Xi'an - chance of her knowing what her hat reads: 19%

Last but not least, one of the many beer friendly perches in our current destination, Chengdu.

So long and thanks for all the ...shiz! (Marcus)

2008-07-25T15:06:00.002+08:00

So long Xi'an and hellloooo Chengdu! Well we can't really give any impressions on Chengdu yet as we only just got here but....staying true to itself, we saw Xi'an out the way we saw it in....absolute hole of a place!

So we went and saw reception at the hotel on Tuesday or so, requesting to extend our check-out by half a day - a facility it seems most places in China are happy to do. This was really helpful to us as the train left around 8pm and like in Beijing, saved us plodding around all afternoon without a base to return to etc.

We wanted to pay for the room extension then and there as Courtney has most of our funds budgeted away. We also wanted a receipt as you can 100% guarantee that come midday on the day of check-out, they will NOT have a record of us extending the check-out - payment or no payment. So she couldn't give us a receipt so we didn't pay - we'd settle it on check-out. Come 12:20pm Thursday, I am lying on the bed and get a phone-call, "Hello Sir, What time were you planning on checking out?" Colour me super surprised! We went through this song and dance in Beijing also.

So we went out for the afternoon to get some lunch and on the way out I checked the card in the door to make sure it would still work - in Beijing it was disabled and we had to get it re-adjusted to the new time of checkout. We go out, get lunch, yadda yadda, come back, bam, cant get in. Wishing it was just dejavu by this point - so back down we go again to get it corrected.

6pm rolls around and we're all packed and ready to go. I spent the last 5-10 minutes in the room filling out their feedback form - i heaped praise on the smiles and polieteness of the bellboys and the young guy who would make up our bedroom on a daily basis. I like writing feedback for these guys, naming them specifically if possible as it's basically a thankless job and I feel sorry for them. A little bit of curtesy and politeness from their part goes a long way in my book. So I fill out praise and offer a few minor suggestions about the hotel as a whole - ie it's an 'International' Hotel supposedly but they will in no way assist guests with the purchasing of train tickets - something that can be very difficult for those who are not Chinese.

We get down to check out, wait at the counter for a few moments then at 6:03pm we are attended by a woman at the front counter. (*Note - my good feedback did NOT include these front counter women). So now she wants to charge us for an entire day as it's 6._03_pm - 3 minutes after the 6pm cut-off. We told her we had been waiting at the counter for several minutes and thankfully she accepted that. Had she not, I would have been informing the manager about firstly that, secondly waiting a minute or two for the damned lift and finally that I had spent at least 10 minutes in the room before leaving it filling out good feedback for them! It's ridiculous how utterly to the letter the Chinese can be. There is a line where their customer service transforms from being nice and punctual to absolutely unforgiving if something such as being 1-3 minutes late occurs. This is something they really need to change. It is not the first time we've come across it.

Anyhow, all good, we get out of there and are on our way to Chengdu - or so it seems. We have our packs with us so ask one of the bellboys if he can assist us with getting a taxi - if you are up to date with this blog you will recall the absolute pain we have had with taxi's in this city. Well spank my ass and call me charlie - here we go again!!

Absolute classic - we're standing on the side of a really busy street and our bellboy is having a HELL of a time hailing a cab. Oh they stop, but when he tells them we want to go to the train station? Nup, see-ya later, they wave their hand and get the hell out of there. The first taxi he hailed was ready for us, then 3 Chinese men just pushed straight in front shut the doors and away they went. I lent down to the open door, saying, "Thank you! Thank you! XieXie! Thanks!" looking the closest guy dead in the eye - he looked away and wouldn't look back. Absolute pricks.

I figured it was because it was too short a distance to the station from where we were...of course, not worth the effort. It was busy between the hotel and there - but the whole city had shocking traffic. In China, you hop in and there's an immediate minimum cost. In Xi'An it's 6rmb(Wuxi/Suzhou - 8, Shanghai/Beijing - 10). This covers the first 4 kilometers, then it's I think 1 rmb per km/minute - something like that. A trip to or from the station was really cheap, only 7rmb or so - definitely not enough for them to bother having to carry two westerners I figured.

Courtney was thinking the same thing. As taxi number eight or so was making to bail on us, I told the bellboy - tell him if he takes us to the station we'll pay him 20 rmb - whoa surprise, he accepts and off we go. He of course does NOT look happy at having to take us. He's driving like a fkng maniac and doing absolutely every rude thing he can to make us know he's not happy; everything short of smoking....Driving like crazy - and i mean crazy, purposelly spitting out the window - something taxi drivers rarely do as I think even they know it's rude in front of western passengers - and then finally of course, lights up a smoke.

At the station we got out handed him his 20 without word and pushed into the station and away from this dump of a city and it's pricks of taxi drivers. So long forever.

Inside the station it was busy as always but at least well air-conditioned. Here is where we experienced the true contrast in Chinese people - as we sat and waited for our slightly delayed train, we spoke to a young Chinese guy who was majoring in English. We covered all the usual topics but it was enjoyable - he showed us photographs of his father and was asking me if he lookd like him - to which I stupidly said, Yeah you guys have similar eyebrows...hey i was tired!

The train was delayed around 30 minutes and thank god it arrived as poor Courtney was approaching toilet disaster phase. The joys of being able to stand as a man are a real privillege in the train stations as the sit down toilets...have no walls on them. Long ago we became adjusted to the fun that is the squatter toilets. Now it's not about whether it's western or squatter(i'd rather use a squat any day for the record), it's about whether 1. the toilet has a door, and 2. the door has a lock. I think i'd actually fill my pants with little surprises rather than whip them down in a public room and do the business like the chinese do. Courtney needed to go alright..and off she went. "They have no doors," i told her, but she wanted to check it out for herself. 30 seconds later she's back, "Not a chance," she said. The women's toilets were not only wall-less(well tiny walls that hid nothing), they were also in a line facing each other - completely open bathroom area with smoking men hanging outside it in full view. Worst toilet's ever.

China tip - if you are going to a train station and think you MAY need to do anything that involves sitting down - do it before you go to the station - seriously.

We board the train and are welcomed into the world of the Hard Sleeper carriages. China has many classifications of train, from soft sleeper luxury - which is a private cabin with four nice padded matress bunks and clean pillows/sheets, to hard sleepers which are padded mattresses in open rooms - 6 per room. The hard sleeper pillow and blankets do not appear washed - we lay there thinking about lice potential...brr. The lack of the door means you get all the outside noise of babies crying, people walking around, chinese guys talking at full volume at 3am etc. Having 6 per the room/dorm also meant there was a much higher snore chance also.

Like the soft sleeper, the train was still bumpy and noisy and very hard to sleep in. The Chinese seem to be able to sleep during anything..and do. There was a russian guy above me(i was in the middle) and Courtney below me. We had a panic attack before heading onto the train when we realized we were both Carriage 4 - Berth 14....basically this meant(or so we thought) we would be sharing the same tiny matress! Thank god it was different to the soft sleepers in this regard. Three people would get no.14 - bottom middle and top. It didn't say who got who but middle is the most expensive, bottom second most, top the cheapest. The russian guy seemed to know he was top so slept there. Middle wasn't too bad but i was paraoid of rolling off in the middle of the night - the train would bump hard at certain intervals - i think when two tracks converged and it'd totally jolt me to wakefulness.

Unlike the two previous trains, this train stopped a LOT. It would stop at stations for at least 10+ minutes. At this time it was oh my god, must try and get to sleep! No movement, no sound! But avast! of course it didn't work like this - for when the train came to a complete and silent stop...you suddenly became aware of the snoring..... The russian guy above me was snoring like a truck, the guy opposite like a smaller truck and even the young kid who was sleeping with his mother opposite Courtney below was kicking his snorevibe in the mix also. It wasnt constant the whole night but it made it very hard to sleep.

Courtney and I just cant master the sleeping on train thing. It was a 16 hour train trip so we're both really tired now. We have one more sleeper train left and it's similar in length. We're going to try our damndest to get a soft sleeper this time round at least.

In the soft sleepers you have control of the lights and personal lights above your bunks if you wish to read etc. In the hard sleeper it was lights out at 9:40pm sharp. At 7am sharp on came a blaring bloody Chinese radio show over the trains intercom. Christ that's annoying! The Chinese are all up and bounding around at 6:30am or so, but bleh, what can you do! We just lay on our beds until midday when we finally pulled into Chengdu.

Chengdu involved us getting a free pickup from the hostel - so painless. But man is it hot. Very smoggy, the sun up there but not really visible and muggy as hell. We have come back to the hostel which has moved from it's original location and now is further out than we had hoped and in what looks to be a pretty ordinary area. The hostel itself though looks not bad. The room is mediocre but the grounds are full of nice seating areas and cheap as hell food! Just ate a burger here for 20 rmb - super cheap for what it was. We were both ravenous from not eating much more than snacks on the train.

We plan to explore the surrounding tomorrow as we're both tired and it's just started raining HARD.

Later!