National Seal Sanctuary 3-7 December 2008

Strictly speaking, not travelling with Jennifer Susan at all - she stayed at home while Mark went to look after seals at the National Seal Centre at Gweek in Cornwall. http://www.sealsanctuary.co.uk/corn1.html

Mark stayed in Penzance at the Carnson House Hotel.
http://www.penzance.co.uk/carnson-house/

This entailed an early start each morning for the 35 minute drive to the Seal Sanctuary to feed the pups at 7.45am. Fortunately the landlord, Rob, offered to produce tea, toast and cereals at 7am even though breakfast wasn't officially till 7.30am. Mind you, it helps if you're the only guest!

The morning routine started with preparing the food for the 11am feed. This involved thawing out sinkfuls of herring and mackerel and dividing them into buckets in accordance with wallcharts to ensure every adult received the correct amount.

Then the paddocks had to be cleaned - a job reserved for volunteers on the grounds that the ponies, goats and sheep don't bite - unlike the seals. Health and safety - the perfect excuse for the (literally) shitty jobs to be allocated.

Morning feed for the pups in the convalescence pool involves throwing the fish into the pool while crouching low to hide from their line of sight. The theory is that this will avoid the pups associating people with being fed after they are released. Instead they believe that fish fall out of the sky. I'm not convinced and neither were they. We kept score of who throw the most fish into the fence around the enclosure instead of into the pool. Mark was a clear winner most days.

The daily routine also included a lot of cleaning. If not washing the blood out of the buckets after the feeding, it was hosing down and scrubbing the pools, which were emptied twice weekly in rotation for the purpose. The trick with this is not to let the seals creep up behind you to give you a playful bite. Or to roll on top of the hose and cut off the water supply.

You also spend a lot of time getting in and out of umpteen different pairs of wellies as you go from one seal to another in the hospital - even more in the isolation unit. And then you have to wriggle in and out of waterproofs before entering each pen, scrubbing them down before taking them off and going to the next one. Not discounting the pulling on and off of surgeon's gloves. All of which aims to avoid passing infections from seal to seal or from seal to human or vice versa. It also amused the girls who staff the hospital as Mark struggled into and out of kit designed to fit them - i.e. petite - rather than him.

Mark's task after all this performance was normally to take temperatures. Not pleasant if the seal gets too scared. But the other end bites.

Evenings off in Penzance out of season were not inspiring. Twice Mark was the only person in a restaurant (Gino's Italian - very nice scallops in brandy sauce, and a Chinese restaurant - Mark's first since returning from China proper). The Little India restaurant got round the lack of an alcohol licence by allowing diners to bring their own - Mark brought his from the Co-op opposite.

At least it didn't rain - well not too much, too often anyway.

Shanghai 15 October 2008

Left our hotel and turned right up East Beijing Road to find ourselves in amongst hardware stores seling everything from copper tubing to scientific instruments. It was as if we had walked into a road full of Robert Dyas's.

Picking away through the people, undisturbed, we reached the tourist trap pedestrian shopping precinct, East Nanjing Road, whereupon we were accosted by hawkers, who were all equipped wth little sheets picturing their wares. Clearly there is an edict prohibiting street vendors from actually carrying their goods with them - you must accompany them to some backstreet where they may, or may not, come up with the promised Rolex.

Spent the morning in the excellent Shanghai Museum before walking down to the Bund with stunning views across the Huangpu River to the towers of the Pudong new business area.

In the afternoon we went to the Jade Buddha temple which featured not only the Jade Buddha, but also the Laughing Buddha...

...and the Reclining Buddha (bizarrely housed in the shop).

In spite of our protests that we had already been to one, Michael took us to another pearl salesroom, where we all pointedly marched straight to the cafe and ordered coffee.

Our final evening meal was in a restaurant which Michael was quick to point out was very handy for the river cruise. Wonder how much commission he was on. We opted for the cheaper, but no less spectacular, view from the bank.

A final battle with Shanghai's gridlocked traffic got us to the airport and our daylight flight back over Mongolia and Siberia.

12 hours of constantly putting the clock back while watching the inflight movies and eating, what my watch insisted (though my stomach was less clear about) were three lunches, saw us arrive back in Heathrow Terminal 4. It took another hour and a half, and a change of shuttle-train via Terminals 1/2/3, to get to the car, parked in the long stay at Terminal 5. Just in time for the rush hour gridlock on the M4 west. Jenny slept while I drove...

Shanghai/Suzhou 14 October 2008

Woke to an astonishing, sci-fi vision of Shanghai dawn from our hotel window. The city is a futurescape of skyscraper architecture.

A long drive to Suzhou and the complete contrast of the Humble Administrator's Garden. Jenny and I took ourselves off alone to take some photos and were pissed off when Michael, the guide, failed to turn up more than half an hour after the agreed time and I had to go and find him. No doubt my tearing a strip off him in front of the group caused him to lose face but his excuses were feeble.

We went to a silk factory, seeing the production from silk worm...

...through unravelling the silk thread from single cocoons...

...to spreading the silk from double cocoons to form blankets.

We went on to the classic Ruigang pagoda.

And the Panmen Gate, the last of its kind in the city wall.

Before taking a boat trip through the area which caused Marco Polo to call Suzhou the Venice of the East (why is it every town with canals is called the Venice of the...?)

On the way back into Shanghai, Michael, in answer to a question from Jenny about getting to the Jinmao Tower the following evening, gave a river cruise the hard sell and rudely said that wasn't what he was talking about when Jenny tried to get him back to the point.

Shanghai 13 October 2008

A third internal flight, this time with Shanghai Air http://www.shanghai-air.com/salnewweb-en/index.aspx took us to Shanghai, where we were met by our last guide, Michael.

He took us to yet another industrial quantity catering where again we did well with the vegetarian option.

We visited the Yuyuan garden, a tiny haven of tranquility in the middle of Shanghai before an early dinner (again) and off to the Shanghai acrobatic show. This included amazing tumbling, juggling and trapeze routines but most astonishing of all, a motorcycle wall of death - a small spherical cage in which up to 8 riders on their motorcycles criss-crossed each others' paths.

Checked into our last hotel, the Bund Riverside Hotel. http://www.bundriversidehotel.com/english/index.aspx

Guilin 12 October 2008

Day trip on the Li River through Guilin's amazing scenery.

Finally cracked and had a pizza in Yangshuo.
After dinner, where we declined the snake wine, we watched cormorant fishing on the river after dark.

Guilin 11 October 2008

Early morning flight with China Eastern airline http://www.chinaeastern.co.uk/ to Guilin and its weird limestone scenery. Climbed Fubo Hill...



...which turns out to be hollow. The river-water has eroded the limestone to create the so-called sword sharpening stone and a cave, known as the Thousand Buddha Cave, though best estimates are that only about 200 Buddhas have been carved into the walls.

Visited the nearby Reed Flute Cave. Seems the Chinese share the same inspiration as the Irish from around Giant's Causeway when it comes to imagining what can be seen in the shapes of rock formations. Official shop selling fake Rolex watches...

Checked in to the Guilin Bravo hotel. http://www.glbravohotel.com/en_1/aboutus.asp Taken to a pearl factory. For some reason they are produced in the South China Sea then brought inland to be finished and sold.





View of Solitary Beauty Hill. Guilin's planning authority won't allow building over 7 storey's in height to preserve the unique character of its hills.





Had a Chinese massage en masse. Jenny was reduced to a helpless giggling wreck when her masseur tackled her calves. That set off everyone else, including the team of masseurs and masseuses.

In the evening we went round the large street market. Mark haggled for a painting. Jenny left him to it so she didn't cramp his style.

Xian 10 October 2008

Woke up and looked out of the window. Couldn't believe the pollution. (And certainly didn't believe Sandy's story about it being foggy today!)Visibility was no more than half a mile. Also couldn't believe that out the back of the hotel, right behind the tennis court, there was a Buddhist temple.

Massive city walls enclose the old city. Drive out to the site of the First Emperor's tomb, by way of the terracotta factory shop...

Pit 1, where the first warriors were found, is a huge hanger of a building.

The warriors are in formation, prepared for battle.

Each warrior's face is unique.

At the far end of pit 1, the partially reconstructed warriors.

Pit 3 is smaller, but the figures are even more detailed and well preseved with some pigment remaining.

The bell tower in the centre of Xian's shopping district.

The Drum Tower, in the Muslim Quarter.

Escaped the rest of the party's expedition to Pizza Hut or McDonalds and enjoyed a vegetarian hotpot (spicing up the cooking water to flavour the tofu as Weyun showed me).

Beijing/Xian 9 October 2008

Some of the 9 million bicycles in Beijing.


A rickshaw ride around the Hutong district.

Chance to visit a Chinese family in their home. Henry raised the subject of the Cultural Revolution.

Early afternoon flight to Xian with Air China. http://www.airchina.co.uk/en/index.html Here we were met by a new guide, Sandy. We risked her wrath by insisting on leaving the group and climbing the Big Goose Pagoda. She wasn't happy that we bought terracotta warrior figures from a commercial shop instead of paying the inflated prices at the official government outlet.

Another early dinner around a lazy suzy then a Tang Dynasty show before we checked into the very posh Grand New World Hotel. Thought we were never going to get rid of Sandy - in her concern for our well-being she accompanied us up to our floor in the lift and would have come into our rooms had we not been quick enough to prevent it.

Beijing 8 October 2008

Headed out of Beijing towards Badaling. Witnessed the aftermath of a car crash on the freeway and suffered the nerve-shredding weaving between lanes and overtaking on blind bends of our driver.

Resisted the sales pitch at the obligatory jade factory before we got our first sight of the Great Wall.

Henry gave us an hour and a quarter and we set ourselves the challenge of climbing the wall as far as the eye could see in both directions.

At times it was astonishingly steep, and the handrail was clearly constructed by the same people who fitted the ceilings in the hotel, barely knee-high.

Truly spectacular views.

After coming down from the wall, we visited the nearby Ming tombs and Sacred Way, where we were informed that what looked like a giant turtle (pre-dating Terry Pratchet and his disc-world by a couple of millennia) was in fact a mythical Bixi.

Mark temporarily abandoned his vegetarian principles to try the dinner of Peking Duck - well, when in Peking...? Actually, the vegetarian options we we given throughout the trip were often at least as good, if not better, than the meat dishes.