Articles from this Category
4 October 2006
Gulangyu gone wrong The Chinese breakfast at the hotel was very greasy. But it didn’t put off the domestic tourists from filling up big-time on the food. After breakfast, we headed out to try some change SGD to CNY at the Bank of China across the road. I was surprised it was open being a […]
3 October 2006
Above: Chinese Opera performer on the street in Xiamen. Leaving Singapore Today I take Mum and step-dad to Xiamen for a little holiday. Despite booking the SilkAir ticket online, electronic ticketing wasn’t available and we had to collect the ticket from a counter before proceeding to check-in. The flight 1120 flight left slightly late and […]
11 May 2005
All aboard! We woke at 0545 for check-out at 0630, in order to check-in for our rail adventure at Beijing West station across the road. We had some muesli in the room for breakfast before setting off. At the impressive-looking station, our luggage were x-rayed before we entered and turned left into the international waiting […]
10 May 2005
It was drizzly and cool today. We had woken up early to get into the swing of an early start for tomorrow morning. And besides we wanted to squeeze in some minor sights after doing only a half-day yesterday. First up was the Lama Temple. This began as an imperial palace in the late 1600s. […]
9 May 2005
Above: Tiananmen Square as viewed from the Tiananmen Gate Tower of the Forbidden City. Getting going Rather unusual of us, we had 11 hours in bed and woke around 0800. Breakfast wasn’t included in the hotel rate so we had a light feed of muesli before heading out. For today, we didn’t feel like the […]
8 May 2005
Leaving Osaka Today we are Beijing-bound. We woke around 0600 but that was fine. The sun rises very early in Osaka this time of year. We hurriedly left the hotel at 0635 by taxi rather than by foot, for the railway station. We made good progress by making the 0700 train and arrived at the […]
31 October 2002
Above: Last minute mending on the streets of Kunming. Today we leave China for Thailand. We started with a hotel breakfast in a garden-like setting. There was a good mix of Asian (congee, pau, red bean pastry etc) and Western (eggs, baked beans, toast etc). There was no western tea for Kim but only Chinese […]
30 October 2002
Above: At the markets. Kim’s mother rang us at the hotel this morning. She’s always interested and excited on our behalf when it comes to our travels. She’s always giving me newspaper clippings which she had collected from a long time ago, about interesting destinations. So perhaps she is living vicariously through us. I wanted […]
29 October 2002
Music from the CD shop started at 0900. The must have well-policed regulations about noise here. We took breakfast back at Sunshine Café, having scrambled eggs with ham and a fried egg with hashbrown (sharing halfway in our usual fashion). The Yunnan coffee was nice. Transport to Kunming, our last stop in China, involve a […]
28 October 2002
Today we moved south on to Dali, also in Yunnan province. It was disappointing to find that there was still on hot water when we woke. We washed using hot water from a vacuum flask and tap water. We taxied to the bus station and found a large IVECO van heading to Dali. Kim wasn’t […]