24th Nov Today is going to be a a bit emotional. Having to leave my travel buddy behind was never going to be easy. Alan now has a job, so i am on my own this trip. Saying goodbye at the airport was not the easiest thing to do. I think Alan held up better than i did. Anyway the flight to Melbourne was good, but we were delayed by half an hour. My connection to Dubai did not leave for another 2 hours, so i was able to spend time in the Qantas lounge. The 12 hou...

18th Today we fly from Chengdu to Shanghai. Its a 3 hour flight. The flight is very smooth till we get close to Shanghai, when we experience some massive turbulence. It rocks the plane with a huge thump. Then we are keep in a hold pattern as we cannot land. We are in the air for an extra half an hour before landing. From the airport we take the Maglev train which travels at 300kph. It does not take long to get to the connecting subway station. We arrive and che...

16th The bus ride to Chengdu seems to take forever. We arrive in Chengdu and we are mob as we get off the bus. So many people want their photo with us. Alan makes the comment he could get used to the celebrity type status. But then he says he could see it getting annoying after a while. After unpacking we go for a walk to see what we can find. Its about 34 degrees C and quite humid. We stumble across a huge pedestrian shopping mall. So many shops and so many p...