We settled into our gorgeous hotel in Lhasa and headed out for some dinner. We went to the highly recommended Snowland Restaurant which serves up some really good Tibetan and Indian food.

We tried yak dumplings (very yummy), lamb stew and some delicious garlic naan bread. We were early to bed to aid our acclimatization.

Our next adventure was a 46 hour train ride from Chengdu to Lhasa, Tibet. We travelled in relative comfort, in a self-contained cabin with 4 beds. They are called the ‘soft sleepers’ but soft is NOT how I would describe the beds. The train ran along the recently completed world’s highest railway line, at a cost of 4.1 billion USD. The Chinese government certainly has some cash to spend. During the last 24 hours the train elevation averaged about 3800m, topping out at 5070m. During this section the train has supplemental oxygen piped into the cars, but not enough to prevent the usual headache. There were several interesting travellers in our train car, and we spent some time chatting with them in the dining car. We were the only foreigners who had any sort of ability to speak Chinese, so we were asked to help with meal ordering by many of the others. Amazing how even a 30-50-word vocabulary can be immensely valuable.

The landscape that we passed through was breathtaking. It began as desert-like peaks, similar to Kamloops, BC but larger, then we climbed up to the wide-open plateau with short grasses and turquoise lakes.


Climbing even higher brought us through a rugged, forbidding landscape; high winds, ever-present snow and little vegetation. Throughout the train ride were tiny settlements, where people eke out a living with their cattle, yaks and sheep.

Descending down towards Lhasa we arrived back in the treeline. The settlements turned into small villages and agriculture supplemented the livestock.

Arriving in Lhasa, we were warmly greeted by our Tibetan guide, Pema, and our driver, Loksam and our shiny new Mercedes van. Looks like our overland tour is going to be pretty comfy!

The big day that the girls have been eagerly awaiting for 6 months since we first mentioned the idea of a trip to China has arrived! A visit to the panda bears!


The panda sanctuary is a great facility, very large with beautiful gardens and ‘tunnels’ of overhanging bamboo over the trails. There are many outdoor enclosures for the pandas but they have wooden ‘decks’ where they are fed so they are quite close to the spectators. They put on a great show. Eating about 40kg of bamboo a day, they munch away happily, first stripping off the outer bark then chomping away on the yummy insides, section by section. They like to lounge around on their back while doing this or rolling from side to side. They spend the rest of the day sleeping.



They are soooo fuzzy you just want to reach out and squeeze them.
We went to the ‘panda nursery’ where we saw 7 babies that were about 3 months old. Very, very cute, sorry, no photos allowed there. Then our timing was perfect and the girls were allowed to sit with a young panda, about 14 months old. They had to wear gloves and coverings over their shoes, to protect the panda, but Maddie gave him some rubs on the shoulders.

Emily was a little scared off because he scratched her as he reached over to the trainers for more bamboo. She got right back in there like a trooper for some more photos though. The ‘donation’ we were obliged to give of 1000 yuan for the chance to sit with the young panda goes back to the facility and the research centre, so we didn’t mind too much.

We had a leisurely lunch, then went to see the red pandas, which look like a cross between a fluffy cat and a raccoon. Very cute but the giant pandas are definitely the main attraction.


What a great place this is to help keep one of the most adorable species on earth alive and well.

Ok, we did it. We went to Chengdu’s brand new Polar Ocean World. It was pretty fun. We saw seals, walrus’, many kinds of dolphins, beluga whales, polar bears, penguins, sharks, sea turtles and various tropical fish.

We watched a seal show and a dolphin show. The girls liked it best when the dolphins jumped up and hit the balls suspended in the ceiling.

A fun day had by all. Now to find some ‘Thanksgiving’ dinner…

Our first big train ride was a success. David spoiled us rotten and brought us a brand new iPad. The girls have been iPad junkies ever since, it is great for the train.

We got the whole soft sleeper cabin together. The girls slept together on a top bunk and we occupied the other three bunks. I was awakened 4 times by the ipad and various items falling off the table onto my head, otherwise it was a good sleep. We are now in Chengdu, at a gorgeous hotel called the Buddha Zen, they even upgraded us to a suite.

We are comfy and ready for the next adventures that await us…

We’ve had a busy week or two planning for our big upcoming trip. We are taking 3 weeks ‘off’ of my treatment here to journey westwards.
Our first stop will be Chengdu in the Sichuan province. We promised the girls, waaaay back when we were at home, that we would take them to see the Giant Pandas. Not only see them but you can hold one as well at this place. You can imagine how excited the girls are about this, and it has been fodder for some good ‘motivation’ to be good girls.

Here is the website for this panda breeding sanctuary, who’s goal is to increase the numbers of Giant Pandas:
http://www.panda.org.cn/english/
We will also have another day in Chengdu so we may visit the newly opened Polar Ocean World. It seems a bit crazy to open a ‘polar’ ocean world in the middle of a semi-tropical area, but the Chinese have spent 2 billion yuan (2.8 million dollars) in building this place. They have installed man-made snow and ice making as well as man-made salt water so that the polar bears, penguins, beluga whales, seals and walrus’ are comfortable in their ‘environment’. I am at odds for supporting this absolutely non-sustainable venture, but the kids would absolutely love it! Oh the dilemma!

Last weekend we went on a 3 day holiday with our good friend, Dana, who is a TCM student at the hospital here. We took a 3 hour train ride to Zhangjiajie. This park is a UNESCO geopark, noted for it’s peculiar limestone spires amidst sub-tropical forest home to 1000’s of rare species of flora. It is these spires that inspired James Cameron’s vision of hanging mountains on the moon Pandora in his movie, Avatar.
On the trip there, we were able to buy tickets in the deluxe cabins of the train, pretty comfy.
(Maddie likes to make crazy faces in photos these days)

We arrived at the train station refreshed and ready to barter. We talked the taxi drivers down from 110 Y to 60 Y. It is a winding road up into the mountains and the taxi drivers do it as fast as possible so that they can return quickly to get more fares. There are incredibly long tunnels through the mountains, several of them just over 2kms long. Contrary to the posted signage, this is long enough for cars, taxis and buses to start passing each other in the tunnel, not for the faint of heart!
We arrived at our destination safely and checked into our hotel. We found a great little street BBQ to have some dinner and went to sleep in anticipation for what our views would be like the next day.
After a delicious Chinese/Western breakfast (with…butter!!) we headed off to the park at the crack of 10:30. Quickly bypassing both the giant LCD screen showing bits of the movie Avatar and the persistent locals who would like to be your guides lurking at the park gate, we began our day. Our first views of the towering peaks above us were awe-inspiring.

We took the ‘Golden Whip Stream’ trail, which is the most popular in the park, somewhat busy but not overly so. It is a leisurely 7km walk along a paved pathway beside the Golden Whip Stream.

There were many scenic spots along the way…


Simon, Dana, and Maddie in the backpack decided to go up another trail for a quick look around. Anticipating lots of stairs, Emily and I continued ahead along the easy trail for a while. When they returned to us they were very excited and bursting with adrenaline. It seems they had encountered a group of monkeys, who quietly watched them and checked them out from afar.

A large male came to the forefront for a better look. Eventually the monkeys realised that they were not going to be fed, or they were simply on display to these strange humans. Here is the photo Dana took a moment before all of the monkeys turned to chase them and Simon began to take flight…

Meanwhile, Emily and I enjoyed a quiet moment in the park just off the main trail.

The hike took a little longer than expected so we opted to go up the ‘Bailong Elevator’ instead of trying to make it across the park to one of the gondolas (there are 2). The Chinese have constructed this elevator both inside and outside one of the spires. It is the world’s tallest glass outdoor elevator at 1070 ft.

The view at the top was fabulous, albeit a little scary for me. We totally lucked out in that the clouds swept in only moments after this photo was taken. That was the end of the view for that afternoon.

We did not know at the time that this elevator is actually rather controversial, and the Chinese went ahead and installed it without the OK from UNESCO and the necessary environmental studies done beforehand. We are not surprised. The future of this elevator is still uncertain.
After our long and fulfilling day at the park we took one of the park buses back to the entrance, only it was the east entrance in a town called Wulingyuan and not the south, where we began. I still cannot understand how there is not a bus back to our entrance after most people just walked the 7km trail that we did. How do they all get back? Maybe we were too late. Two city buses later, with the aid of some kind Chinese people who spoke a tiny bit of English and we arrived back in Zhangjiajie village. We have been fortunate; whenever we have been really stuck we seem to find one person who can help us out with the language.
We met a nice German couple on one of these buses and Dana was very glad to be able to speak in her mother tongue for a few hours as we all had dinner together.
Day 2…

The next day dawned wet. Very wet. In fact it was pouring rain. Not ones to be scared away by a little wetness, we unpacked our raincoats and headed out. We decided to take the bus back to the east entrance, possibly buying a little time so that the rain would let up. It did not.
After much map consulation, we decided to take the Monkey’s garden trail, sounds innoucuous enough. The trail was depicted as a yellow line, same as the one we took the day before, so we figured it would be a similar walk low in the valley. An attendant at the park gate confirmed this for us.
In contrast to the day before, we were the only ones on this trail. The rain was somewhat abating and the air was warm, so we were content. The scenery was lush and green with beautiful bridges here and there.

This happens to be a pivotal photo of our day. The steps on the right are the first set of stairs that we had encountered. They continued on the left of the bridge, and then continued again. At every bend of the trail was a new set of stairs. We reasoned that perhaps we were just climbing alongside this small stream and that it would even out eventually. No, this was not the case. In this situation, at some point one must come to a decision; go up further, or down? Since we had a good 8 hours of rain previous to that moment, the unbeaten path of the stairs was quite mossy and slippery. We thought it best to keep going up. After all, this was supposed to be an ‘easy’ trail wasn’t it?
The rain did stop and we got to a few viewpoints along the way. We were, indeed, climbing way up. Some of the viewpoints were more dangerous than others, we gave this one a wide berth.

We came to a beautiful archway on our hike, and the first people we had seen all morning. This must mean we are near the top, we thought excitedly!

Then we climbed some more, and hit the cloud level.

The trail got busier with tour groups coming down to the nearby viewpoints, and finally we made it to the top! We had climbed 3,878 stairs to the top of Mt. Tianzi at 1262.5 metres. The total climb was about 750 metres or 2300 feet. This was Emily’s first peak on her own, we are so proud of her; she had a great time and did not complain once. I must say it was supremely tough for me, as my legs are not what they used to be, but I persevered. Madeline did the climb most of the way in the backpack (way to go Simon) but climbed many of the stairs near the top. The Chinese people were amazed to see two young girls tromping up the long staircases.

We did know, however, that there was a gondola waiting for us at the end; and we hoped that the map was wrong once again and would be taking us down instead of up some more as it had indicated. The gondola (with 26 more freakin’ steps to get to it, bringing the afternoon’s total to 3904!!!) ride was amazing. It was like we were flying on one of the prehistoric birds from the movie Avatar.


If this wasn’t exciting enough, we then had only 45 minutes to make it to our train. We ended up in Wulingyuan again, so had to find a taxi to take us to Zhangjiajie village, grab our backpacks from the hotel lobby, and drive down to Zhangjiajie city to get the train.

Remember the aforementioned tunnels? It was crazy.



We were warmly greeted at the Huaihua train station by one of the hospital’s drivers and welcomed back with open arms by the staff who were still at work. It was very touching and we feel that we are a part of the family of this hospital. What an adventure this has been!

Another sign that we saw in Zhangjiajie, in a washroom. The things I am learning…

As some of you may know, we visited a beautiful forest park, Zhangjiajie, last weekend. It was an awesome place. We are just sorting out the photos but I have a few ready now. There were many signs posted along the trails, and most of them had a funny English translation. Here are the gems…
Our silly girls at the park entrance:

At the start of the trail, “Welcome to the Golden Whip Brook Fit Tourism Line. Breathing the oxygen purifies the lung. Rubbing feet makes you fit. The bridge offers greatest delight. Walking on the stone stakes improves health. Deep valley provides peculiarities.

The Chinese signs often remind us to mind our manners:

A basic fire warning:

Not really too sure of the message of this one:

Watch for lightning!

On a small beach of the stream grow densely precious phoebes. Walking in the woods makes the tourists drunk with coolness and fragrance.

We soon learned what this meant…

Again, a bit of an unknown to me:

Ooooh, shaky rocks!

As we climbed a little higher, we found this sign that reads, “Friend, this is a natural oxygen bar with a rich content of negative ions”

We took an elevator, yes, an elevator, through and up the mountain side, these were the instructions posted at the door while we were waiting, I particularly enjoy the last rule:

And finally, just some basic mis-translation, I think they meant exit tunnel, but instead, instilled a feeling of something sinister lurking?