Halfway!

Hi Everyone

Well today (or perhaps last Wednesday..) is our halfway point in the trip! We've now been in China longer than any of the other countries and geez do we know it. China is great, but it's hard work.

The blog is coming along nicely, you will no doubt have noticed the slideshow on the right hand side with a link to all the photos we have uploaded so far. We've recently begun to put captions on the photos, and there's some pretty funny stuff let me tell you.

We've also added a map with places we've been and a rough timeline which I think is pretty cool so check it out! Eventually I may cross reference the posts with the little markers and embed some photos, but not today.

As a brief non in depth update on what's been happening, we're currently in Shanghai until the 22nd of July whilst our visa's get an extension. I guess 5 working days means 5 entire working days to the Chinese Bureaucracy...

After the bus trip from hell we spent 3 days in Kunming (check the map) where we walked around and went to the movies twice and then got a bus with a very sleepy bus driver to Dali which is a nice old city. We spent about 2 days there and then travelled to Lijiang where we checked out the sights, went on a death march around town and then walked Tiger Leaping Gorge - post from Shell coming soon ;)

At Lijiang we had organised a cruise through the 3 Gorges along the Yangtze river starting the 11th July so we saved oursleves a couple of days travel by flying to Chengdu on the 9th. We went and saw the Panda's, learnt to play Mahjong and hung out and then got the train to Chonqing where the cruise started.

The cruise was pretty ace (deserving of its own post) and we made some excellent friends including Sandra and Camilla from Denmark and Dan and Andrea from the US, who live and work in Tianjin and bought a cot off my cousin who is the principal of the school where thier children go. My aunty also teaches there.. small world, eh?

Once the cruise was up we got a 25 hour train from Yichang to Shanghai (post on the way from Shell!) and now we are in Shanghai, staying a little out of town in a pretty crappy hostel. We thought we'd be here for maybe 4 or 5 days but that got set to 7 by the PSB who currently have our passports while they extend our visas.

Our chinese is coming along nicely, we are a bit sick of the oily food and the spitting and general manner of the man in the street is different to what we are used to. Which is strange as every time we've had the chance to talk to someone they are all really nice and extremely interested in what we are doing and do we like China and all that sort of malarky. Yes China is a strange place. But I'm coming around to it....