I awoke earlier than usual in my hotel room this morning.  "What's that!", I wondered to myself.  There was an unusually large amount of car horn tooting and blaring going on, yet the time was only just after 6.00am.  I soon realised what had happened.  My ear plugs had fallen out! Read more…

As I awoke this morning in my hotel room, something was different.  What was it? Read more…

The pouring rain that occurred again this morning slowly dissipated as I began my day. Tina had warned me before coming here, that this area frequently rained in summer, so requested that I please bring two pairs of all the important clothing and footwear that I needed.with me, plus any other pertinent rain gear I could think of. Read more…

I lay alone on the hotel bed contemplating the last week or so of this adventure I was on, this China trip. Many things were flashing through my mind. I felt a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that I was in a position to meet such a wonderful Chinese woman as Tina and undertake such a remarkable journey. So many folks wouldn’t have been able to do what I was doing, for one reason or another. Many others simply were unaware of sites like ChinaLoveMatch.net and the potentially enormous rewards that could be achieved throughonline Chinese or Asian dating. Read more…

Today we were to leave the Qingyin Pavilion area to return to Tina's home town of Shawan, a smallish town of a few thousand people.  It was located forty minutes bus trip from the larger town of Leshan, that in turn was located an hour's drive down the highway from Chengdu.  I noticed that the speed limit on the highway often was 120 km/hr, faster than most equivalent highways in Australia, where 100 km/hr was the norm，maybe 110 km/hour if you were lucky. Read more…

Today was a rest day. My legs were a little sore from the big effort we put in yesterday descending the mountain. Even Tina admitted to having slightly sore legs, something that she had't expressed so directly to me before.  I learnt that her body weight hovered between 51 and 52 kgs, so she was even lighter than what I'd thought.   Read more…

Tina and I awoke without delay, as is the custom in China.  From early on, often a cacophony of sounds drifts up from the streets, assaulting one's ears, ranging from blaring car horns through to street vendors crying out, plus the often quite loud conversations held by people going about their day to day business. Read more…

Day 5 on Mt Emei dawned to be quite lovely, a brisk 8 degrees Centigrade or so, even though it was summer.  In winter, I was told this area was covered in snow, quite unwelcoming for tourists and almost impossible for hikers to safely navigate due to slippery ice on the steps, making them exceedingly dangerous to traverse.  Especially if carrying a backpack, that raises one’s centre of gravity, meaning once you start to fall or trip over, it’s difficult to recover from.  Read more…

7.00am arrived with a polite knocking on my door.  Shaking myself awake, I crawled out of bed and slowly cracked open the door. It was Tina, with a big smile on her face. Read more…

The flight over from Brisbane to Hong Kong and then transiting through to Chengdu was a bit of a nightmare.  This had nothing to do with meeting Tina -  but everything to do with accidentally slicing my little toe on a piece of tin whilst walking around barefoot in my backyard, merely hours before the big flight to China. My toe was bleeding profusely but all I could do was to bandage it up and hope for the best. Read more…