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…

For the last two weeks it has been solid rain here, and not very warm either. We’ve been holed up in our room or at the shopping mall playground, not much for excitement otherwise. So today it warmed up and the sun kind of peeked out from behind the clouds for a little while. We decided to go out and embrace the environs. In plain talk, we let the girls run around in the mud puddles.


Of course this was great fun for them and we had a few giggles ourselves. You can judge for yourself here:
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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!

Our friend Dana and I had a chance to have an afternoon and evening to ourselves. Now that we have a cell phone the hospital staff feel a bit better about letting us wander freely in the city without them. I’m not sure if this is about our safety or if they think we are defenceless due to our lack of Chinese language skills. Regardless, I’m sure the proverbial S&*$ would hit the fan if anything ever happened to us.
We began the day with a new hair colour for me (back to my regular colour), which was done very professionally at a new salon. We then both got a great foot massage which included some arm and head massage too.
Afterwards we wandered around the markets looking for fun souvenirs for Dana to take home to Germany. We were getting a bit peckish so some chicken fit the bill.

Here are a few of the sights along the streets:


Tired of walking, we took a ride on the wild side, on a motorcycle taxi! It was a short ride and lots of fun.
We arrived at the central ‘night market’, which is where many people gather to eat and do a little shopping after nightfall. The culinary options are great, you can have squid…

or meat, fish or veggies on a stick…

but we decided on this delicious chicken, mmmm mmm!

We are getting pretty good at our bargaining skills with taxi drivers for our trip back home, it is a comparatively long fare, some do not even really know where they are going, but we manage to whittle them down to 40 yuan ($5) for this 20 minute drive and no more!

It is 3:20am and I am awake. What better time than to add a few photos that have accumulated that are notable.
On one of our Sunday outings, the girls got to go for a horse ride:

These ‘stone bridges’ are very popular, found everywhere.

It is fall and the rice has been harvested:

Here it is drying:

Here’s the kids playing in the rice, just like a sandbox:

The rural Chinese have a tough life:

We are living in the ‘newest’ city in China, Zhongfang. There is promise of greatness, similar to our subdivisions:

The reality:

And finally, we’ve decided to ditch the training wheels, Emily is a biker!!

She loves her bike gloves ‘just like mom’. A lifesaver for learning to ride, otherwise one scraped palm and it’s all over for the day!!!

Seven years ago Simon and I tied the knot. It has been bliss ever since… (choke, choke, gag, sputter, cough, cough) OK, bliss is not a word that should be used to describe daily life, but we are a fantastic duo and our lives are richer for having met.

We started our afternoon off with a trip to a REAL coffee shop, and had a coffee, tea and lemonade for the girls.

After lunch with the girls, we left them in the capable hands of one of our translators, Candy. They were happy to go back to our room at the hospital and watch movies galore! Simon organized the rest of the day, keeping it a secret until this point. Up to now, we have been with the girls 24-7, this was our first time alone. So we giddily skipped down the street to the hair salon, Simon got a haircut and after we both had full massages together. The Chinese use the ‘tui-na’ style of massage, which is kind of different. You are clothed, for one, and there is more manipulation of the joints and pressure on Chinese acu-points, as well as some slapping movements. At one point I was on my back, feet and legs pulled up above my ears and my coccyx was being slapped. An interesting position! In the end, it feels pretty good. Gotta love the wallpaper in our massage room:

Our next stop, hours later; was dinner at a fancy place called Vivian’s. They serve both Chinese and Western fare at this restaurant. We were very cozy as our table was in a little room surrounded by curtains and we sat on comfy couches.
After waiting for a while for a menu and a server, we tried pressing the button on the little table display. Lo and behold we got service! We were in business!
Some of the fare on the menu was less than appetizing…

Originally we had cashew and bacon salad, lobster and a New Zealand rib-eye steak in mind. The bartender had stepped in to help our shell-shocked server, and he relayed our requests directly to the kitchen by walkie talkie. We were denied all of these wonderful things, not available. Vaguely in my memory came up something someone at our hospital had related similarly in the past, so we did not make a fuss. We both settled on the only available Western dish, a peppercorn t-bone. For the bottle of wine, Simon had to follow the bartender to the storage area and was told to pick it out from the boxes. Of course they were all written in Chinese so he told them that he had to actually SEE the bottles to be able to choose from them. We ended up with a half decent Chinese Cabernet. Haven’t seen an imported wine on our travels yet.
Everytime we needed the help of our server, we pressed the button on the table display. Coincidentally, we both had been hitting the same button in the middle, and I finally realised that meant we wanted more water! So we had a bit of a water stockpile…

So, being a bit devilish, and a bit tipsy, we thought it would be rather funny to hit ALL the buttons at once and see what happened.

Ok, we didn’t actually do it, but it would have been funny.
Our steaks were very good. Cooked a nice medium-rare, and the peppercorn sauce which they poured on the steaks was very tasty. You should have seen the look of horror on our servers face as Simon motioned for her to put some of the sauce on the ‘mashed potatoes’ on the side plate. I now understand why she gave her friend the look, it was, in fact, a sweet coconut bun!

We ended up a lovely meal with a mango sorbet, which looked an awful lot like a mango milkshake but at that point, we thought, who cares?

We had to have our photo taken under the funky lights as we left.

Another funny experience in China, but as we said in our vows,”‘Every day is an adventure!”