Xi'an photos

Terracotta Warriors - photos can never do it justice. I bought a book of photos, and had it signed by the little wizened farmer who dug the well that led to the discovery of the buried army 30 years ago!

Biking on Xi'an city wall - it's harder than it looks!

More Beijing photos...

The little Mandarin!

Beijing market street

Foot massage

Around our hotel

Photos from Beijing

Great Wall of China - and a great climb too!

Kung Fu Show.

Forbidden City - the Emperor's palace until 1911.
Calligraphy on the path in the Beihai Garden - this is a form of exercise for the old men. He wrote "China New Zealand friendship"

Temple of Heaven

Photos from Hong Kong

Some photos from Hong Kong. We had aride on this old lady's sampan around Aberdeen Harbour.
Typical old apartment building, washing hanging out windows! The newer ones must have dryers because they don'tseem to do this.

Market streets.

Farewell Hong Kong

At the airport waiting for our flight to Singapore. Here nice and early which was good as we had no trouble at check in with our bags - had the big weigh and juggle of stuff in the hotel foyer before we lwft, so we were pretty confident all would be ok. The Singapore Airlines girl even gave Jiggs a special box for his golf club ( no - he could not restrain himself from this great deal purchase!)

Spent our last day pretty much just shopping and looking at Hong Kong. Went and had a drink at Castros bar, run by Aunty Alison's son Ross. Ross and his wife Lavinia had a drink with us - he looks and sounds just like Uncle Ivan only with red hair!

Went back to our favourite restaurant for dinner, which did not disappoint - Kate was fully recovered from her illness,whatever it was, by breakfast time yesterday, so she was able to enjoy her last day which was good.

A last stroll through the market after tea - Kate particularly went for some excellent last minute purchases, and Bill bought himself one more Billabong Tshirt as he found a design he didn't already have, and he had no clean shirt for today! Charlotte (unbelievably) was really pretty much shopped out! She made one last purchase, bargained the woman down to $30HK, then confessed she only had $22.80, to which the woman said OK, so Charlotte just tipped her purse upside down into her hand.

Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow - Grandma's for lunch!

Roller Coasters and dim sum

Early morning on our last day. The kids are still sleeping - Kate was up in the night vomiting so we are hoping she will be better this morning, but luckily we do not have a lot planned for today, just wandering about taking in a bit more of Hong Kong, and of course a last trip to a market somewhere. Charlotte Imelda almost bought her 9th pair of shoes last night but desisted at the last minute. As Bill pointed out to her, her bag at 23kg is being subsidised already by those of us with bags under 20kg (I have to confess mine is also slightly over, but I do have quite a bit of other people's stuff in there!) We have convoluted plans for cabin luggage....

Had a good day yesterday at Ocean Park. The rides are not as wild as the ones in Aus or America, but they were good enough fun for the kids, and the location of the place, perched on a headland overlooking Aberdeen Harbour and posh areas of Repulse Bay and Stanley Bay and out to some outlying islands, is spectacular. I was quite happy to look at the view rather than go whirling about upside down. There is a magnificent cable car ride connecting the 2 parts of the park, which travels round one side of the headland - pretty scary, but great views. Unfortunately the Panda House was closed, but you can't have everything.

We went down to Aberdeen for yum cha for lunch, quite spicy Shanghai style dim sum which we hadn't tried before but were good.

Found our best restaurant yet for tea, with real cantonese food just the way we like it - chicken and cashews, beef with black bean sauce, etc and we could also have bao with our dinner - perfect!

We spent an interesting half hour at the Chinese government shop, and bought a whole lot of medical equipment for work - total cost $200NZ, and it probably would have cost 5-10 times that at home.

It will be good to see everyone when we get home - not really looking forward to work on Mon morning though! It's lucky we will have a day off on Wed to recuperate. Kate and Bill have collected up a few trinkets for their friends, so they will have fun on Monday seeing them all, but I guess the gloss will have worn off by morning tea time. Charlotte still has a week's holiday so she'll be Ok.

Love to all xxx

Hello from Hong Kong

Back in Hong Kong and what's the first thing we do? Markets of course!

We were sad to leave China after a magnificent week - so much to take in there, and so different to home. As we said goodbye to our guide Tracey it was a bit sad that Kate would no longer have any opportunity to use her Chinese (she's no better than the rest of us in Hong Kong because they speak cantonese here, not mandarin), but she was given one final chance to prove her usefulness as I was taken aside by Chinese customs to explain why Bill had 2 BB guns in his bag! Surprisingly, after a phone call to the Chinese government to confirm, he was allowed to keep these, but had 2 magnetic toys confiscated.

Had a very busy day in Xi'an. We headed off early to see the terracotta warriors, which were every bit as amazing as Kate and I had remembered. They have dug up 3 pits, but there are several more still buried that they do not plan to excavate until they have better technology to preserve the paint on the warriors. The biggest pit open has about 6000 clay warriors in it, of which 100 have been restored, all slightly bigger than lifesize and each one individual. Apparently the craftsmen modelled the faces off each other. If anyone didn't do a good job he was killed, though as Bill pointed out this was probably a better fate than that of those who did a good job, who were buried alive at the completion of the tomb so that the secret of its location would remain hidden.

Over the past 2 years there has been a huge shopping area built around the museum, in readiness for the hordes next year with the Olympics - I preferred the walk up through trees and gardens last time .

We also went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which is inside a buddhist monastery. Climbed to the top of the 7 layers of that, which gave us a great view out over Xi'an (our legs have done pretty well on this trip).

Xi'an has a city wall which is still intact and they are very proud of. We hired bikes - 2 tandems and a single - and had a hilarious time wobbling our way around the top of the wall. Tandems are not as easy as you would think!

Off to Ocean Park now to ride the roller coasters.

Love to all. Keep up the good work with the tests cam.