Home Inn (Xiamen Hubin West Road)

Xiamen was a typical Chinese city. It was not very interesting really. About the only exciting thing that happened took place in a local department store. We were on the third floor looking for a few things that we needed back on the ship, and Cub couldn't find a bathroom. We must have asked a half dozen store clerks and none ...

... and also quite straight. Very fragrant too. We took a few but the last we saw of Nancy when she left us at the airport was her carrying a very heavy bag of bananas back to her office!

On the return to Xiamen Nancy took us to see the shopping area of the city, very modern and everything you could want to buy! The hotel, Metopark, is new and the best we have stayed in so far, very flashy with a nice mixture of modern and Chinese styling. Very comfy beds. For some ...

... is coming in the other direction.

In principle they drive on the right here but this does not appear to apply to cyclists and rickshaws who want to turn left for example. In one place they are building a new dual carriagway. Half of it has been laid. The other half has been abraded with a pneumatic drill to make the new surface stick. It's like driving over corrugated iron. Traffic is driving in both directions on both the old and new parts of the carriageway. EEK!

... 1497;ם קולונ 97;איליי& #1501; מערבי 97;ם מוקפת במבני 92; המודר 04;ים של העיר ש'יאמן. האי על אף היותו מ ...

... 1513;י של העיר, מזכיר צעידה ברחוב אלנבי, שעל אף היותו מוזנח, הוא נוצא בקרבו חלק מהבני 97;נים ה ...

... 36825;样就会 ;很快的从ू 7;内到达翔ê 33;。

根据 066;政府的规 1010;，以后翔&# 23433;会成为另& #22806;一个中心 。

Xiamen is nothing like what I thought China would be!  Entrepreneurship, consumerism, and advertising are all thriving in this cosmopolitan part of the world's largest single-party Communist state.  In many ways, this place feels more like home than anywhere else we have been.  The mostly middle-class population shops and works and shops and works and shops.  The familiarity of this mundane routine is surprising in a place that I though ...

... apart but I had gone too far to step back now. Hangzhou airport was a surprise too, I expected a dimly lit hall with three airplanes departing daily but it was a huge, busy airport with a very interesting cathedral-shaped roof and could be entered into any airport design contest. Ninety minutes later I was in the deep south, it was warm, no wind, and when I walked around long after dark to get some dinner, wearing a T-Shirt and no jacket, I knew I had done something right.

... that there had been a full scale ticket search going on all the way from Shaowu to Xiamen. People had rang people and everyone had tried their hardest to get me a ticket and the end result was; TRAVELLING IN SPRING FESTIVAL IS OK, YOU GET RIPPED OFF AT HOTELS ETC BUT... HAVING TO BE SOMEWHERE DURING SPRING FESTIVAL ESPECIALLY IN FUJIAN REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY SUCKS! As it was explained to me later, Fujian shares a lot of family ...

... with a couple thousand backpackers. Oleanne Rockafella and Jeanine Gaudry showed up for a day with one of Brodie's sisters friends from back home and we had a WICKED night out on the town. We got powerwasted and went to our first Ping Pong show. On our way back there was five of us in one tuk-tuk that usually is cramped with 3. With the added weight on the back wheels our driver felt compelled to lift the front wheel off the ground everytime we stopped. After hearing us scream ...