Day 2 and 3

Day 2 ended up being a big history lesson, I don't really mind them :).

Anyway, we drove 2 hours East / South East of Guangzhou and arrived at pretty much the "mouth" of the Pearl River, you could argue that the mouth is really where Hong Kong is, but for most of the last century, this was the "mouth" of the Pearl River that China controlled. The place was called Hu Men (tiger's mouth literally).

Local sights included some coastal batteries that remained from the days of the Opium War, a lookout to the general direction of Hong Kong (not that you could really see Hong Kong), a HUGE bridge across the mouth of the river (they had put under water barricades/stakes here during the Opium War to stop British ships heading into Guangzhou proper), and the Opium War museum, which was on the site of where 2 million crates of Opium were destroyed.

Day 3, I went lychee picking, I'm not too big a fan of them (too sweet) but there's a town close to Guangzhou that is quite famous for its lychees, one of the driver's at Mum's school owned a plot of land, so we headed out there, en route, we also saw a few banana trees, and some rice paddies (minus people in straw hats... sorry Jared).

Let me know via e-mail if anything comes out bung (pref. with screenshot). China has blocked blogspot.com (so i can't view my own blog!!!!).

Sorry, having trouble uploading photos... will have to try something else, maybe someone could lend me some webspace somewhere?? :)

The motherland - day 1

I've arrived, got the pleasure of touching down at Guangzhou's brand spanking new airport (the old one was a small strip of land right in the middle of the city, yes there would've been much skyscraper dodging). It rained when I touched down but its even warmer than Singapore! 35 (previously 33 as the plane touched down) degrees here. Its unbearable without air con!!

Things of note straight away:

People's tolerance of heat - much like my tolerance of cold and alcohol... it borders on fantastical. I saw many people walking around in the sweltering heat with JACKETS!!!!!!!, long sleeves I can maybe understand... but JACKETS!!!!!1111

Reckless driving - I love drivers in China, everyone thinks they're invincible, lucky we were on the motorway (sorry... they're called expressways here), otherwise I'm sure my driver would've played chicken with each and everyone of the oncoming cars.

I think I'm in need of a shower, and then catch up on the sleep i missed playig Super Mario Bros, thats it for now.

Singapore!

Man its hot here, I stepped off the plane and started sweating :D

Flight from Welly to Auckland was largely uneventful, I got delayed by an hour because the previous plane got struck by lightning (nice of them to tell us before we got on the plane). The air-bridge operator dude ran off to watch the rugby at the pub when we landed, so I was delayed by a further half an hour.

Finally got on my flight to Singapore at 11:40PM, and promptly played Super Mario Bros until we landed :D. So I'm bloody tired, oh well... at least I clocked Super Mario Bros

Man I love Changi airport, its so huge! There's about 10 Singpore Airlines airplanes outside the window I'm posting from (could look nice in a photo).

I might go and grab a few beers (at 7:30 in the morning!!!).

Disclaimer: Any posts from now on are as is, I make no promises to the correctness of English within, English is my second language after all :P

See Youse!

Right, plane to Auckland leaves at 7:00pm, just doing last minute checking of things I need to take (Yes, I did bring underwear and socks this time!)