The Last Post?...Maybe...but then again!.......

As my journey comes to an end, I attach a link to a short video of my own favourite pictures and moments. I also attach a montage video of some of the many great travellers and people I met and got to know along the way.
I've met some fascinating people and seen some incredible things that have stirred such emotions in me, from one end of the scale to the other. Along the way I've felt.... happy, ecstatic, nervous, terrified, overawed, confused, disorientated, tired, hyper, love, humility, horror, sadness, desire, anger, elation, courageous, invincible and also very insignificant at times. I can say hello and thank you in an extra 7 different languages and I know my way around 33 more towns and cities than I could before. I also realise how incredibly lucky I am to have been able to travel to the places I have seen.
I've arrived home to see the people I love and who love me after an amazing journey both personally and in miles. Thank you for following me on my travels. Hope to see or speak to you soon, I've missed you. I hope you find me a more tolerant and balanced person but ultimately still the person that you know. As they say in Asia, "Same, same......but different!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN_pbiNOq00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwKisMoRm7k
(follow the link, then best to wait until the video buffers completely before playing)

A wonderful way to end my trip.........travelling home in style

On arriving at Beijing airport and showing BA check-in my e-ticket which detailed all the many flights I had taken with them and their flight partners over the last 5 months, I was delighted to be given a free upgrade to Business Class for the flight home. Wowee! What a way to come home, eh? I was one very happy traveller, I can tell you!

Homeward bound........

I'm starting to get excited about the thought of going home. First thing I'm going to have after I get through the door? A big mug of tea of course!!

A plethora of gorgeous sights to behold......(Beijing, China)

Well, it's been a busy week sightseeing and our feet are aching big time! But it's been worth it. Beijing is a fascinating, interesting and absorbing city. It is also massive and it takes a while to get around the main sites even with a great metro system, very reasonably priced taxis and a lot of stamina. Just to give you a rundown of the main ones I visited plus pics.....

Forbidden City:
This is a huge site and takes a minimum of 2-3 hours to do just the main parts. But it does conjure up the impressive images seen in the film, The Last Emperor, and the restoration work has really helped bring it to life.

The Great Wall:
Awesome, even in the rain!
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaForbiddenCityAndGreatWall#

Tian'Anmen Square:
A tiny bit disappointing as they had scaffolding over most of it. But a must because of its history. They now have a large amount of guards and cameras in place and you are searched before being allowed to enter to save a repeat of the public and student activity of the past.

Houhai district:
Locals gather here at night to spend time doing activities such as salsa dancing, badminton, skipping and a Chinese version of line dancing. Very surreal. Of course, I had to join in with the line dancing - the locals thought it was very funny that I did and I blended in seamlessly being the only Westerner in a line up of about 100 people!
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaBeijing#

Summer Palace/Temple of Heaven/Lama Temple:
These are beautiful and so worth the visit.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaBeijingPalacesAndTemples#

Beijing Opera: This can be an acquired taste for Western ears but is famous in China. The female lead had the most piercing voice I have ever heard, very high pitched and it could lift the lid off a jam jar. But it was also very colourful and the second act was visually very exciting - see video links below for a taster.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/AudraSTravelVideos#5379402317306368498

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/AudraSTravelVideos#5379403059932010482

Olympic Park:
I had to visit if only to see the Bird Nest stadium. The park is spread over a large area and they had some really interesting art scattered throughout it. It was also the quietest place I had been to in Beijing! As an aside, the stadium is now used for concerts aswell as sports events. To kick start this new stage of it's usefulness, it was said that they needed a big international male singing star as the first artist to perform there. Who do you think it was? Elton John? George Michael perhaps? Maybe even Billy Joel? No, it was that well known singer......Jackie Chan!

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaBeijingOperaAndOlympicVillage#

Oh, and somewhere along the line we managed to see England win the Ashes in an Irish bar in Beijing - a very multi cultural experience!

Could you remove the scorpions, please? ...........Chinese food

China has produced the greatest mix of strange, good and quite bad food of my travels. The quality of food within this country varies widely and I've had tasty and healthy food in the equivalent of a fast food outlet and dire quality food in more expensive restaurants. Very pot luck and I must admit the sin at times of being pleased that McDonalds and KFC were around and have taken over the world!
For Western palates, there are challenges. They eat tofu here with the most foul smelling sauce - it produced a massive gag reflex in three of us who were passing by the stall - and possibly explains away the street and toilet smells you come across here. Unless you specify otherwise, they chop chicken as it is with the bones and all. Chicken knees and ankles need a bit of practise to eat with chopsticks, I can tell you, and puts you in danger of whizzing a part of your dinner over to the next table. I decided to waive the opportunity of expanding my appreciation of international cuisine by passing on the roasted chicken feet and the fried ants, grasshoppers and scorpions which are considered very yummy here. Mad Mark was brave enough to try the fried scorpions - see the video evidence below! Also, abalone is not an Italian dessert but an ocean mollusc and sea cucumbers are like giant slugs, rather than a ocean equivalent of the vegetable we know. (They apparently have the peculiar ability to expel their internal organs when startled by a potential predator and then regrow them!) But anything that looks like a large, wet muscle turned inside out, is not for me I'm afraid. We were advised to peel fruit unless it was in a skin of its own such as bananas, due to the copious use of pesticides and the fact that they are often sold at the sides of busy roads - carbon flavoured apples have not caught on in the UK as of yet are far as I'm aware.
You are best going to a more expensive restaurant to enjoy the famous Beijing duck or Peking duck as it's still known, to really appreciate this dish and get a good quality bird. We ate this at my last hotel and it was decidedly tasty. Dishes I have really enjoyed are: boneless chicken with cashew nuts and chilli - in fact most things with chilli in so that the food made your lips go slightly numb were fine by me. Also, stir fried beef and peppers, meat and vegetable dumplings and broccoli dishes as they cook the vegetables 'al dente'. Sometimes the sweet and sour dishes came with a thin sauce rather than the thick, gloopy sauce we know in the UK and it was so much better for it. And you can always rely on rice, boiled or fried,...or McDonalds if nothing else appeals. :-))
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaFood#
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/AudraSTravelVideos#5379240906235275986

A few pics and videos whilst I'm busy sightseeing.....

The attached have found their way home for your perusal and entertainment. I went to a fantastic show on Sentosa Island in Singapore. The images in the pictures were created by shining light and pictures onto water which was being sprayed up to 40 feet in the air. The effect was very dramatic.....
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/SingaporeSentosaShow#

I also attach a short video of Rambuttri Road in Bangkok showing the sights and sounds just down from my hotel. I ate from street vendor stalls that evening and took a video whilst I was there. Ahh, brings back memories!.......
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/AudraSTravelVideos#5379431448403668770

And for those you have asked. I attach......my bungee jump video off the Kawarau Bridge, Queenstown, NZ. Just look at my face when he says "Smile for the camera" - nervousness written all over it plus a passing thought of "I've got a few things on my mind but the camera at the moment, mate!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxTbDjWCgGk
(follow link then best to wait until the video buffers completely before pressing play)

O.K. Stop! I wanna get off...........(public transport in China)

Public transport in China, particularly buses and trains, need a special mention due to the extraordinary amount of stress, discomfort and irritation they produce, together with the ability to push tourists to the edge of madness. People here have no concept of what queuing is or means so when the bus arrives we have quickly learned that it's every man, woman and child for him/herself.

When it comes to trains, staff will only open one 2ft entrance or exit and squeeze 1500 people through it. It doesn't matter how early you get to the station, all waiting lounge seats are occupied and you'd think that 20 minutes would be more than adequate to board a sleeper train.....but not when half the population of China are boarding your train, with the entire contents of their house and the train is parked 2 miles away on a route that would put an army assault course to shame. It also seems that we are missing some sort of trend or have stumbled across a little known secret society as a large amount of people are carrying around big air con units!

On a plus point, some locals are friendly and although it can go either way on that front , I shared a sleeper train cabin with a very pleasant and educated couple who's son could speak a bit of English. They loved my Chinese mandarin speaking Blackberry - I used a language application to say "It was very nice to meet you!"

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaPublicTransport#

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/AudraSTravelVideos#5379401175573205522

Blimey, I've nearly reached Beijing.................(China)

I'm really looking forward to seeing Beijing and will be spending a lot more time here than anywhere else in China. Plus I get to see cousin Amanda and Mad Mark again who are flying in from Australia to join me for a few days after my tour finishes.
There is so much to see in this city - the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tian'anmen Square, etc. And I'll finish off my trip in a nice hotel with, hopefully, a large bed, white sheets and lots of towels - bliss after the sleeper trains!

If you're into concrete, then you'll love Shanghai...........(Shanghai,China)

What can I say about Shanghai? Well, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that sometimes time is needed to see the beauty lying underneath. When I was here, Shanghai seemed to be one big building site and there isn't many traditional sights to visit. It has some interesting districts to it and I know of some people who rave about Shanghai but it appears to me to be very similar to every other aspiring Asian city.....a huge amount of shops, noise, pollution, people and fast food outlets. Maybe it's reputation has been built on/by the stock exchange but I just didn't get it and it's beauty remained hidden to me. Don't get me wrong, it's worth seeing if you are passing but I can't say I had a hankering to stay here longer. Maybe I'll get the opportunity to come back when the building work has calmed down a bit.
I did go to a jaw dropping acrobat show here though. It was great entertainment, very beautiful to look at at times and the acrobats could bend themselves into positions that looked as if their spines and skeletons had been removed. Photos were supposedly banned but no one was adhering to this rule so I got a sneaky one in - see across. What I wouldn't give for stomach muscles like they have!
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaShanghai#

Soldiers and Starbucks........(Xi'an,China)

Xi'an is quite modern with lots and I mean, a HUGE amount of shops. Plus a large amount of McDonalds and KFC outlets! But it also has the traditional roofed buildings that you see on postcards of China, temples, pagodas and the Terracotta Army as a major draw. Xi'an is great and I really liked it despite the fact that the taxi and bus drivers drive like lunatics here - and that's saying something after some of the Asian cities I've been to!

Now I've kind of got used to surreal things happening by now but a trip to Starbucks (the native breakfasts here are top of my list for being unedible for Western palates) delivered a corker. Two of us were sitting having a drink looking out onto a modern shopping mall and a small garden area when a van drew up. Two soldiers got out with (rhymes with buns) and approached Starbucks and we thought "Uh, oh, what's up?" One stayed outside, sat down and laid his A K 47 on a table whilst the other came inside with his A K 47 and.......ordered coffee! I did manage to get a pic of this moment (see link below)....without being noticed of course.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PocketGem/ChinaXiAn#