I’ve been in Asia for 4 months and have been to Indonesia,  Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. There are millions of people on motorbikes in these countries because they are cheap, small and can swerve in and out of busy traffic. As they don’t have cars they carry all sorts of crazy stuff on their motorbikes.  Here is my list of some things I’ve seen...

We walked the 500 metres to the bus stop down the street from the Citadine at the Melody Hotel in Xian.  The bus goes directly to the airport and stops at the two terminals. We got off at the wrong terminal and to walk to the next terminal; lucky we had a luggage trolley.  We did the check in thing and got our tickets, then went through another security check and got to our...

The hotel/apartment complex we were staying in had an adjoining restaurant.  Here they served a good buffet breakfast. Our room came with one breakfast – yep, one. Useless for a family of four so we asked if we could use our 4 days of breakfast so that we could all eat together one day.  So, that is how we started this day, all eating a hearty breakfast together.

We had no...

Finally the day had arrived – Terracotta Warriors Day!  I was really looking forward to seeing the guys myself.  Our tour guide Mary picked us up at 8.30 am and we joined an Australian couple and a US couple in the minivan for our day tour.  

First we headed off to the Big Goose Pagoda; named because when the monks were hungry one day and prayed for food, a flock of geese...

We woke to a wet dreary day in Xian, which also happened to be our wedding anniversary.  After breakfast in our mini apartment we headed out in our raincoats to wonder the streets of the Muslim Quarter of Xian.  What a delight!  It was really busy on a Sunday with everyone out, even given the bad weather.  We discovered all sorts of great street foods and enjoyed the people...

We had an 11.10 am flight to Xian to catch today so we set the alarm for 7 am. I was wide awake at 6 am so I commenced folding laundry; that’s dirty laundry mind you because it fits better in backpacks when neatly folded!  Steve woke and went a bought a litre of milk (8.90 Yuan, about $1.10 AUD) in the shop downstairs so we could eat our own cereal and we proceeded with our...

We had no great expectations or plans of what we would do in Shanghai.  The first morning we set off to find breakfast.  We ended up catching a ferry to the other side of Shanghai, walked along and came across a ‘City Shop’ supermarket. We bought muffins, juice and yogurt for breakfast and sat outside and enjoyed a very quiet breakfast. 

We found it surprising that we...

I had no idea what to expect when we flew into Shanghai.  I had just recently finished reading ‘Lost on Planet China’ (author?)  and frankly I was a little scared about what ‘real China’ would be like.  I needn’t have worried because the first thing I saw when I walked out of the airport was a large ‘KFC’ sign in front of me and this ‘China’ was no better or worse than...

The Marshal Hotel does a mean buffet breakfast. In our travels so far we haven’t seen anything like it!  Four long sections of tables set up, one with fruits;  one with cereal, toast, juice and milk; one with rice porridge and more fruit and one massive long set up of tables with egg, meats, vegetables, steamed buns and everything that Asian people love for breakfast!  We...

I had read on the Taiwan travel site, www.taiwan.net.tw about Taroko Gorge and the surrounding area and decided that it was worth paying the money to go on an organised tour from Taipei for two days.  Through my research on the website I contacted a travel company called Have Fun Travel www.havefuntravel. tw    Both are fantastic websites and were a great help in the...