Taishan Garden Hotel

... veg and fish, plus some nice cakes. We then entered the Dai Temple, the largest structure in Tai'an. The temple was huge (not as big as the Forbidden city but still big) with lots of interesting temples, shrines, monuments and even a geology museum (another way to bore Pete to death, haha). After spending a few hours in the temple, we wondered on past a Christian church and onto Dong Lake. It basically was a park with some nice bridges and statues. We continued to walk ...

... the ferry over and rode the fernicular up to teh top of the island with great views of the harbour and the spectacular skyline. We watched a bird riding a thermal for about half an hour just circling up and up, higher and higher. I think i might go paragliding when i get to the US again.

... une belle surprise. L architecture portugaise est superbe, mais la beaute de cette ville est en danger. En fait, les chinois adorent cette destination vacance et de nombreux touristes y viennent chaque fin de semaine pour jouer au casino. Il y en a au moins une vingtaine! Et souvent, les constructions sont affreuses, denaturent le paysage... Nous y sommes alles, mais comme on devait s y ...

For the long weekend, Zhou Zhou, the savvy and cool one in our office, and Shao Lin, the girlish, energetic and happy one in our office, took me by both arms and whisked me away to Guangzhou for a day of shopping. Dongguan is mostly composed of migrants who have come in from all over the country. So there's a lot of northern and western influences here and the older, Cantonese-inspired culture has been buried somewhat. Guangzhou seems to have kept its roots pretty firmly ...

Greetings from Guangzhou. Well it's our first stop in mainland China and it's a fairly nice introduction we have to say. They say that Guangzhou at first glance is like an Asian L.A. There's kilometres and kilometres of freeways, flyovers, skyscrapers and one shopping mall leading into the next. Not quite what we were expecting of China but progress waits for no man (or woman). We were in ...

... and has been said to give Macau it's name from the local A-Ma Kok. The temple is really a sprawling mass of incense burners arranged around big rocks with calligraphy etched into them. The place is alive with bossy guardians who sell incense to worshippers, allow them to light it and place it in the troughs in front of the altar, it remains there momentarily before the shopkeepers sweep them all up and throw them into a furnace to make way ...

... sleeping in Lulu's room) with Internet connection IN THE ROOM. Dude. That's where I am now and I have to go, its nearly 4am and we are up at 7am tomorrow for more absolute randomness. Its brilliant not knowing what's coming next? Day 41 ?November 12th, 2006 - Tour of Guangzhou After enjoying free internet in the room of our ridiculously expensive (we weren't paying remember) hotel room, we had 3 hours sleep before making it down to the buffet breakfast featuring CEREAL AND FRUIT ...

Guangzhou Polished off the rest of our supplies for late breakfast but by 3pm we were getting hungry again. Restaurant car closed about 3 minutes before we got there and the plethera of annoying guys trying to sell fruit or bread from their trolleys that had been passing by every 5 minutes were nowhere to be seen. After misreading the timetable, a little remeniscent of my arrival into Beijing, we finally made it into Guangzhou at around 4.30pm. Rather than race onto ...

... mountains. Went for a wander with Patrick and Marike (a GP just outside Amsterdam)who had already been travelling for 7 months. We spent an hour climbing up a very steep hill side to a temple where we shown how to pay homage by a local monk. This entails one down-up movement of praying hands, followed by the placing of one and then two hands onto the ground whilst ...

... of the meal, Kevin came over and started showing us tricks that the PolyU girls showed him, including tearing a napkin perfectly in half, and making a toothpick bounce. Our table started to get into it, and some of us couldn't do it! Anthony got so frustrated with one of the tricks that he went crazy and broke his chopstick. At this point, we were well past finished with our meal and the noise from our four tables was ferocious. The wait staff ...