A few days in Shangri-La

I have just returned from LiJiang in China.  Yes, my first response was also "where's that?"  LiJiang is in the Yunnan province of southern China and is next door to the area that inspired the fabled Shangri-La in the story Lost Horizon.  I was invited there to speak at a customer event, sharing experiences of how other customers have used our software.  When the China HP team were asking me to go they said that LiJiang is a very beautiful place.  Picturing the cities of Beijing and Guangzhou in my mind, I thought they were just talking it up, but I was wrong.  It was amazing.  In a valley surrounded by mountains, LiJiang City contains an ancient Old Town which is a world heritage site.  While now very commercialised for tourists with bars, restaurants, hotels and lots of shopping, the traditional buildings curving along flowing streams is just beautiful. 
The conference event was on Friday.  On Saturday morning we had an organised tour (with a 6am start) where we went by bus and cable car up to a meadow with great views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, yaks grazing and lots of tourists.  We then attended a show called Impressions LiJiang which was held in a purpose-built, outdoor arena with the mountain as backdrop.  The show was directed by the man who did the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and involved over 400 performers doing dances and songs to provide "impressions" of the local cultures and history.  It was quite spectacular and colourful. In the afternoon I had more time to explore the old town before starting my journey back to Singapore.  I got home at 4am this morning!

We made it!

4 courageous team members, 2 awesome support crew, over 20 blisters between us, 0 sleep, 100km, 27 hours & 17 minutes and it looks like it will be over $3000 in donations for Oxfam - it was worth it. Trailwalker is amazing - the course is challenging, physically and mentally, with steep uphills and downhills and monotonous flats. The first 60 km we were all smiles, and games and silly jokes and then as the night wore on we became more silent, the ipods came out and the blisters and sore muscles became more obvious. Earlier on in the day teams would pass each other with friendly banter but after about 80km people were trudging past complaining "who signed me up for this?" and "what fools are we?" or nothing at all. We got lots of texts from people which helped keep us motivated - just when you began to think "why are we doing this?" someone would send an encouraging message or a joke or a poem. When we finally got to checkpoint 7 and only had 7km the mood swung around, we once again had more energy and the pace picked up. We ran over the finish line with loads of people we didn't know cheering for us. It felt good!

It was lovely to get back to Tamsin's place for a quick shower and a nice sleep but when I woke up for dinner I was extremely stiff. I looked like I was about 80 - a really old 80. Tamsin set up a foot spa in the lounge but I needed her help to get there. Anna had the brilliant idea of pushing me around in the wheelie office chair. I think she enjoyed that as much as I did - the steering wasn't great but at least I didn't have to walk. By the next morning and another spa, this time in the backyard, my body was moving again (not quickly but at least able to go forwards).

The visit was too short and in no time at all I was back at the airport. The plane was pretty empty as it was not going onto the UK. First time I've had a spare seat beside me in a while.

Thank you to my intrepid team members Chrissy, Debbie and Kim for inviting me to be a part of the adventure. Kim you made a great red captain!

A very special thank you to Rohan and Matthew Burgess who were our very reliable and encouraging support crew. And to the support crew back home filling in for me - Matt, Jackie and Juvy. Thanks to Tamsin for her hospitality once again - she makes me feel very welcome and it was good to get a dose of family. Thanks Penny for dropping in to see me and special points awarded to Otto for greeting me with open arms and yelling "my favourite aunty" - see brainwashing does work. Although after he'd spent the weekend with Aunty Tamsin I was relegated to "second favourite aunty". Ah well don't really mind coming in second to her - she does a good job of looking after people.

Singapore accommodation is full at the moment with loads of people stuck in transit. We had the Waters family come for dinner tonight who we haven't seen in 15 years. They are stuck in Singapore awaiting a flight to London. It was great to see Cindy and Rohan again and all our kids played very happily together.

End of the Holidays

This weekend was the end of the school holidays and the girls went back for Term 2 today.  Last week activities included an easter parade, two days of having friends over including Holly for a sleep-over, a day at the zoo and Gena took the girls to see Alice in Wonderland.  They were both very impressed by Alice cutting off the dragon's head with a sword - that was the first thing they wanted to tell me about. 

Friday night we had Andrew drop by for 90 minutes on his way through to Israel.  He had got off the Tasmania ferry that morning so was having a very very long day of travel.  It was great to catch up with him, even briefly.  Stress levels rose slightly when we couldn't book a taxi but we eventually got one and he presumably made his 1am flight.

Saturday morning we headed to the Chinese Garden, hoping to be the first to find (FTF) a new cache.  While we here hunting around the likely tree, the couple who had actually found it first walked up to replace it.  So close!  It was nice to meet some other goecachers and have a short chat.  After doing two caches at the gardens we walked to the Singapore Science Centre which is like Scienceworks.  The girls enjoyed all the hands on exhibits about sight, sound, robots, etc. and we'll need to go back again to do the areas we missed.  The visit wrapped up with a play in the waterworks area - we love that all the big attractions in Singapore have water play areas for the kids.

After picking Buckley up from doggy day-care, we all went into the K9 Cafe where we and our dog enjoyed afternoon tea with other people and their dogs.  Lucinda was in heaven.  We then dropped Buckley off and headed to a final farewell at a park for the Primmer family.  Leaving there we dropped the kids off with Gena and headed out for dinner to celebrate Claudi's 30th birthday.  It was an enjoyable evening of Thai food to complete what ended up a fairly long and enjoyable day.

This Wednesday night Lucinda heads to Australia to complete the Ofxam Trailwalker 100km event this weekend with Kim, Chrissy and Debbie. We're sure they and the support crew will do very well.

Hanging out in Hong Kong

We have just arrived back from a fabulous week in Hong Kong. For most of our holiday we stayed at a little guesthouse in Kowloon which was cheap, convenient, clean and well "cosy". On the first day we went to market - five to be exact - antiques, flowers, birds, the Ladies Market (but no ladies for sales just lots of handbags and scarves) and the Goldfish Market. Apparently fish are lucky (for people obviously, I don't think the hundreds of fish in the little plastic bags pinned to noticeboards felt particularly lucky). The second day we explored Ocean Park where we enjoyed close encounters with Pandas and, of course, lots of sea animals. The rides were also a big hit. Matt and I loved the skychair around the mountain while the girls liked the rattly old rollercoaster best so we went on it four times. The next morning we visited Kowloon Park and its sculpture garden where we added a few finishing touches to the artwork. We then headed to Disneyland..

We stayed the next three nights at the Disneyland Hotel and were immersed in all things Mickey Mouse. The windows on the train to the resort are mickey-shaped as are the pikelets for breakfast and the pizzas for dinner. The hotel was glorious fun with Disney characters dropping by for breakfast and dinner. Disneyland lived up to expectations of being the happiest place on earth - the rides, the characters, the shows, the parades, the kids and their parents. The streets were clean and neat and decorated with colourful flowers, shops everywhere and everyone behaved themselves - reminded us of Singapore. Our girls especially liked the fact that two families from Avondale Grammar were there at the same time as us and we managed to bump into them quite frequently and sit with them for shows. The girls and their fair hair proved popular once again and they were dragged into random tourist photos - at one point there was even a queue forming. Matt had to go to work in Hong Kong so the girls and I did the second day at Disneyland by ourselves with Matt joining us for the fireworks at the end of the day. On our last morning the girls and I spent a relaxed few hours by the pool where Alice made a friend with a boy called Hunter who she kept calling Danger or Killer by mistake - which just shows what she really thinks about hunters!

It was then back to reality at the Lee Gardens Guest House in Kowloon. The girls and I took an historic tram up to the top of The Peak for a great view of Hong Kong. We met Matt after he finished work and then went to the Symphony of Lights which is where skyscrapers participate in a lights and laser show to music for 20 minutes. Held our attention for about 5 minutes and we opted to look for a cache instead.

Hong Kong is known for its skyscrapers, shopping and neons lights but much of Hong Kong is mountains and islands and it even has some good beaches. On our last day we took a ferry to the countryside to visit Lamma Island and walked from a seasisde village to a fishing village, stopping along the way for a herbal tea in a little garden. We were once again grateful to our habit of geocaching which took us exploring a little off the beaten track to find two caches.

And now we are back in Singapore - our own Disneyland - where News Asia recently reported that there was a crackdown on crime....
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1043386/1/.html

After reading this story I was relieved to have those criminals off the streets, who knows what they may start doing next - j-walking? selling gum?

Some happy snaps...