China

Today has been another terrific day in China.

We started off early in the morning and drove two hours through the outskirts of Shanghai with surprising blue skies for moments at a time. Eventually we got to Suzhou - a city of a mere 10 million and toured the beautiful Humble Administrators Garden with its pools of Lotus and Centuries old pavilions. Its hotter today and still humid but there was shade and we enjoyed our visit. Then to a silk factory where we were shown the entire silk making process and then were given the opportunity to shop. We bought a silk doona cover and matching pillow cases and Mum bought a beautiful jacket at a 1/4 of the price you might pay in Shanghai!

Then we arrived at this terrific hotel. Our local guide jessica and Tour leader Danielle have made this part of our journey truly memorable and tomorrow we do more silk factories then take an afternoon flight from Shanghai to Yichang to connect with our 4 night cruise. Last night we saw the fantastic Shanghai Acrobats and we will see the Kung Fu spectacular in Beijing as well as the 3rd of the must see shows the Tang Dynasty show in Xi An.

Dodging through the traffic here is very exciting particularly in this city where most people travel by cycle or electric scooters which you cannot hear. At the moment we can hear constant honking horns and the multitudes. late this afternoon we walked through the Suzhou Park and saw musicians practising with Chinese instruments and others singing and doing Tai Chi as we strolled through the garden.

Met our group last evening and this morning started the day by walking on the famous Bund by the Huangpo river overlooking the Pudong side and its fantastic skyline. It is a public holiday being the Autumn Festival with all citizens getting 3 days off work. Huge crowds everywhere and we are often being asked to pose for photos with local families. Although Shanghai is unrecognisable from our last trip to China we love the skyline and multitude of fantastic architectural wonders. After the Bund we travelled to and from Pudong Airport on the Maglev train travelling at 430kph - a 7 minute trip each way. Everything is immaculately clean. We had a pleasant local lunch modified to Western tastes and then we travelled with the multitudes to the Yu Gardens and then elbowed our way through millions in the Yu Yuan markets. We spent an hour here looking at the maze of shops art galleries and Restaurants and then returned to our comfortable hotel The Westin Bund. After several hours rest - it is quite humid although temperature is in the mid 20's - we all were taken to another local restaurant and then to the wonderful amazing Shanghai Acrobats. The show which featured contortionistes, jugglers, acrobats finished with an extraordinary 8 motorcycles racing around an enclosed sphere then back to the hotel for the night.

Pudong Skyline with Celina

The Bund Shanghai

A lot of bull on the Bund

We are meeting our Tour leader in about an hour and we will also meet our companions for the next 20 days. We arrived in Shanghai at 12.30 am Local time or 2:30 am at home. Since we left Melbourne at 10:30 am it was a very long day. Our A380 was probably the most comfortable plane we have ever flown but no sheepskins on offer. Celina slept for over 6 hours on the way to Singapore and then slept for a another 2-3 hours on the flight to Shanghai. What a pleasure it was to arrive at our very comfortable hotel and be upgraded to a lovely room with views of the Bund area and Skyscrapers on 2 sides of our room. Amenities are wonderful and today we got up at a leisurely time and went down to a specialty Sunday Brunch accompanied an orchestra Opera Singers Hula Girls and Balloon blowing clowns. After stuffing ourselves we spent 3 hours walking down the famed Nanjing Street among crowds of millions. Honking horns mixed with Bicycle bells and street touts selling copy watches and bags with Tourist police playfully dealing with them. What a change in 27 years since we were last here.

Shanghai Skyline

Nanjing Road Shanghai

Arrived at Tulla with no fuss after our smooth Limo ride frofm home. Home was very quiet with Tippy being gone to GAP at Seymour. Packing went without a hitch. We board in about one hour and are currently sitting in the Singapore business lounge. More later.

Once again preparing for a trip with Scenic Tours. This time to China starting with Shanghai and finishing in Lhasa. Still 1 1/2 days of work and finalising our preparationis. We are really looking foward to this as last time Celina was an non-professional participantas a part of a large multidisciplinary pain managment group which included 48 proffesionals then working in Pain Management. Most of us where busy preparing lectures and demonstrations of invasive anaesthetic procedures and my role was to explain the use of hypnosis in pain. We Medical and paramedical members spent a lot of time whith colleagues of the China Medical Association and missed out on much of the scenery and touristy things.We hope to leave this Saturday and spend the next 3 weeksmoving aroungd some of this nations touristic places with a tour company we have great faith in and hopefully with a view to making friends, will keep any one interested posted on our progress from Shanghai, Beijing and Xian to the Yang Ze and across to Lhasa. Our trigger fingers are itchiY! Next entry from Shanghai.