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!”

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…