I ummed and aah’d about whether to blog on this holiday. It’s just a quick trip, and whilst it does fit the bill for requiring passport use, lets face it, it’s New Zealand, and therefore pretty much part of Australia 🙂 It was a last minute decision to have a week in the South Island…

Tuesday 5th September. Shanghai. 25-36°C. Sunny and Hot. Everything in China is big. Big numbers (population 1.6 billion), Big cities (Shanghai 24.15 million), Big construction (I have never seen so much building activity), Big highways, Big flavours. With quantity comes efficiency. (In the middle of the night I thought of the words that describes this, but…

Sunday 4th September. Shanghai. 27-31ºC. Partly sunny. A little warning. Today’s blog contains discussion about snot. It has other good stuff too. But there is definitely a little of the not-so-pretty chat. Dave has being feeling slightly under the weather over the last two days or so. Nothing too serious, just a slightly sore throat and…

Sunday 3rd September. Father’s Day. Weather: 24-28°C. Cloudy and humid. Expectations were high. Dangerous I know. I had previously been on two food walks with ‘Culinary Backstreet Tours’ in Tokyo and Barcelona. Both were excellent. A Shanghai walking food tour is now added to the list of unbelievable experiences. Logan our guide was terrific; the other four in…

Sorry no post from yesterday  – It was a pretty exhausting day, mostly involving travel from Chengdu to Shanghai. I will write a two-day version when we are back at the hotel tonight. We are just about to head of on a culinary tour of Shanghai – I cant wait… I hope my expectations aren’t…

Friday 1st September. Today’s weather: 20 – 24ºC; Cloudy with an occasional shower. Hang picked us up after breakfast, this time on foot. We walked the short distance to the subway and caught the train to the centre part of Chengdu City. The trains are new, clean and fast and we were efficiently in the…

After a beaut brekkie (Dave’s words) Hang picked us up at the Hotel and we headed out of Chengdu, towards the south. This is my breakfast. No chilli – I thought that was best with my slightly unwell tummy 😉  The drive south to see the largest Buddha in the world in Leshan was a great…

Not long before we went to bed on Tuesday night, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker system, aka, as Dave refers to it, as the ‘annoying Tannoy’, that there was a “change in conditions”. A couple of kilometres ahead of us up the river a cargo ship, laden with containers had overturned, and the…

I need to be honest. I am missing Facebook. I miss knowing what’s going on in the world. What’s happening with my family and friends. Funny videos; clever quotes; Facebook stalking. Nothing for 11 days! Will sent me a text last night asking what I thought of the Australian batting collapse. FB is usually my…

Our room includes a ‘drinks package’. Each day we are entitled to either 6 cocktails, a bottle of wine or 6 beers, plus unlimited juice, coffee, tea and soft drinks. Considering Dave doesn’t drink alcohol, this has set me a bit of a challenge. Last night before dinner we went and sat in the bar…

Sunday 27th August We woke to a warm and cloudy day. The sun came out mid-morning. I’ve never seen it foggy, hot and sunny at the same time before! Dave has found his favourite spot. He is reading a book called ‘A Painted House’ by John Grisham. There is a library on board – this…

Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Well here we are, in a flash hotel room in Chengdu, China, having just woken up from a pretty good night’s sleep in a lovely comfortable bed. (previous readers of this blog will know I place high value on bed and pillow comfort!) China doesn’t allow Facebook, so what better excuse to revive…

To start: a selection of photos from our last day. Click on each one for a description. We have reached the end of our holiday. As the saying goes ‘all good things must come to an end’. Personally, I’d rather they didn’t! I am writing this post on the flight home to Australia. Thanks to…