Nov 14, 2011 - Xiamen

Waccy races again with the same manic driver as Sunday, this time back from Yong'an to Xiamen. The highlight of the trip was, when playing stock-car races through the city centre of Xiamen a bus cut us up and the manic drivers reaction to indicate that there were some bad drivers in the world had us speechless with disbelief.

Oct 23, 2011 - Xiamen

Oct 20 - Yawn, long day on the train. 7 hours on the milk run from Shanghai to Xiamen. Maybe the plane would have been better, did not even think about it at the time. It's amazing how you can spend 7 hours on a train going 200KM/H and every time you look out the window you see buildings of some sort. How do you know when one city ends and another starts. What is in all those factories? Is it something I have used before? Maybe? I will never know. Oct 21 - Went by ferry today to the small tourist island of Gulang-yu. It is a national park...

Oct 9, 2010 - No man/person is an island...

Happy birthday Gungwu! And a very youthful looking 80 you are too! Perhaps we should also mention that it would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday today too if he'd been alive - an auspicious day! It is also the last full day of our "official" tour (sob!) This morning we hopped on a ferry to visit Gulang Yu, a small hilly island off the coast of Xiamen island. This used to be the centre of foreign activity in the 19th century, with the British initially using it as a manageably small and defendable base, which then attracted all the...

Oct 8, 2010 - Southern lands

We had a more leisurely start this morning, given our long day yesterday. We started off with giving Gungwu his birthday present (an iPad) a day early so that we could help him set it up properly. We then visited the Xiamen Wanshi Botanical Gardens, which occupies an enormous area of the island and is immaculately designed and managed. It's wonderful that in this busy, crowded city, there is a place where people can wander around innumerable ponds, temples and themed gardens. "Wanshi" means 10,000 stones and the gardens are named thus...

Oct 7, 2010 - Tunnelling to Xiamen

We woke early (again!) so that we could fit in a visit to Lan's grand uncle's and great grandfather's graves. These are now located on a hill outside Shaowu, accessible only by walking through farm lands and then climbing the steep slopes of the hill, through a thick bamboo forest. Sadly, Margaret couldn't make the journey with her still sprained ankle, so the oldest cousin (who is almost the same age as Margaret and also can no longer make the trip) stayed behind in the hotel with her while the rest of us ventured forth with the other two...

Mar 9, 2010 - Xiamen, China March 9, 2010

Xiamen, where in China is that? That is the question that so many of us asked (had to be on the coast of China!). As it turns out, Xiamen is a "new" city that is centered around Commercial/Industrial progress AND focused on easy port exportation of many of China's products. We arrive in the early morning to a bustling, growing city that looked like a combination of Shanghai and growing cities in Indonesia. Our dock space was even located up river to a new (still under construction) Port Terminal building from the "old" dock location in an...

Dec 27, 2009 - Xiamen

De laatste stop voordat we naar Hong Kong gaan, Xiamen. We komen er zaterdag aan en voor het eerste deze reis is het hostel vol..maar binnen een paar minuten hebben we een kamer in een hotel, wat nog minder kost dan het hostel. We komen nu in subtropische gebieden, we zien veel vogels en planten die we niet kennen, nu voelen we dat we ver van huis zijn. Ook de eerste muggen dienen zich aan..dat wordt dus smeren met deet! Laurien ontwijkt in het begin angstvallig elke mug en Ronald vindt het eigenlijk niet zo nodig om zich in te smeren..wat...