Welcome to China
Despite the wonderful view of the Himalayas unfurling below us, I am not particularly optimistic about the next stages of our journey. I hate flying...
Tagged: kunming
House-Hunting in Dahab
This is my third time looking for a house to rent in a foreign country, and I’m beginning to feel quite fluent in it. Plus,...
Learning Mandarin: Week 4
“If you finish this book,” Sophie reiterates, “You’ll be able to get all around China with no problems.” I wouldn’t have thought it possible when...
Learning Mandarin: Week 3
A week to go before we head out of Kunming into the great wide open, over 30 hours of language lessons in, and we are,...
The Friday Photo: Nine Dragon Pond
It’s been sunny lately. So t’other day we went to the park. And the park was a lake. With nine dragons. Now, the Chinese have...
Learning Mandarin: Week 2
So the boy and I have completed our second week learning Mandarin in China. We’ve only got a week’s more learning before we’re out on...
How to Ride a Bus in China
Even after boarding Indonesian ferries, riding rural Cambodian buses and squeezing onto the London Tube during the Christmas Eve shopping frenzy, taking the bus in...
Learning Mandarin: Week 1
Learning from our experiences in Indonesia, I figured it would be wise to start our sojourn in China by actually studying a bit of Mandarin...
The Friday Photo: Heavenly Palace
Yesterday we wandered through the skyscrapers of downtown Kunming to gawp at this ninth-century pagoda, set in a quiet garden where grandmothers take their grandchildren...
Anyone for Chicken Claw?
Wandering around Kunming, our “home” for the past week, I sometimes feel a little like those British journalists inspecting America during the Gilded Age, marvelling...