After my trip to China in 2016 when Carol was disappointed she could not go with me, we started to plan another trip, at a time when she could have not just 2 weeks away but 4 weeks.

Planning commenced not long after my return from China looking at not just retracing my trip but going to new places. Carol had always wanted to see the Pandas in their natural habitat, then there were the Terracotta Warriors and The Great Wall, as well as catching up with friends, the way the plan was starting to look we would need much longer, compromises need to be made, but what!

Less stops, or longer hops on the train. Some of the stops that were planned need to be dropped but that meant that one hop from Chengdu to Xi’an needed to be by plane not train as the train would have cost us s full day or more.

Time spent with friends would need to be cut but that was ok as most would be at work during the week, to make up for that we would meet up with some of my friends in Hong Kong and we would go to Ocean Park with them.

Our visit to Macau would also be reduced to just one day, and on that day we would also see a show that Carol wanted to see “House of the Dancing Waters” it would be a long day.

Once we leave Hong Kong the plan is to retrace my 2016 trip then on to Wuhan to Introduce Jennifer to Carol, and then to Chengdu, Xi’an and Beijing. Mostly travelling by High-speed train with the longest trip Wuhan to Chengdu being about 9 hours, for this trip we would travel in the top class to be as comfortable.

To improve communications while in China I would insert an Chinese SIM card into a spare phone I had as well as install “WeChat” the messaging application all my Chinese friends use as well as a translator application that could be used off line, and it could not be anything associated with GOOGLE which is blocked in China.

I had just upgraded my home network equipment which allowed me to setup a private VPN to my home network that I could use with my computer at the hotel. I had also printed some cards about the size of business cards with the name and address of the places we were to go to, one side was in English and the other side was in Chinese, I could hand the appropriate card to a Taxi driver so he would know where to take us, my only fear was that the translation was not as good as it should have been so I cut and pasted the Chinese address of the hotels we booked from their website.

I also asked my friends to proofread the cards, they gave them the OK but also said if I got into trouble to contact then by phone or WeChat and they would translate for me, luckily we did not need that but it was good to know we had that back up!

Our priorities were set and the trip planned, we then invited Snow to join us for the trip, he wanted to, but was not sure if he could cope so initially he declined, I then looked for a way he could join us for part of the trip, flying directly to a town we would be at when he arrived with no need to change planes, and found that this could happen in Chengdu, so this was put to him and he was hooked.

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Richardsclan

Welcome to Herman and Carolann’s Travels to Asia

China 2017