August 2006
→ Fessing
(26th August 2006)
There are some things I didn't mention about China. I didn't mention them because I don't know how good China's internet surveillance is - the firewall works for the BBC and "Tiananmen", but China residents say it's easy enough to get round - and I want to be allowed to go back. It was probably cowardly of me, particularly in light of news items over ...
→ Home
(26th August 2006)
It took me 24 hours to get from the Four Seasons to my flat. This is, I think, because I chose a particularly weird route, for reasons which made sense at the time. So I flew from Hong Kong to Delhi then Delhi to Mumbai. I know it's a weird route because no-one that I could see did the same thing. I had been looking ...
→ White
(24th August 2006)
To celebrate my last night in China, I chose to do exactly the same as on the previous night. Barbecue and foot massage. Only this time, we were accompanied by J, a smart and hard-working Chinese journalist here, who currently works for a magazine for young Chinese women which manages - at least from the pictures - to be about travel to interesting places, and ...
→ Distaste
(23rd August 2006)
Guangzhou is famous for two things. Firstly, the tons of tat for sale. There is a toy market, a mobile phone handset market, and probably a small yapping toy dogs market. Today C and I bought pictures of the Twin Towers; bright orange funereal cups which will serve as egg cups; a hamburger phone (that was C, not me); some sandalwood incense to burn at ...
(22nd August 2006)
The train was the T812 Through Train from Kowloon to Guangzhou. Or from The Airlock, as Hong Kong is known, to China proper. The train was clean and was empty and only half an hour late. The train attendants – stewardesses? – wore bright blue suits and white gloves and, when the train had started, frilly white aprons. They came through offering newspapers, then unidentified ...
→ Pre-love
(19th August 2006)
I am better, I think. Enough, anyway, to swim in the pools and rediscover the underwater muzak. And to wonder the following:
1. why do women start sunbathing at 7.30 in the morning?
2. why - and how - do women put on their make-up on public transport?
A trip to the Peak yesterday. The Peak Tram is pulled up a very steep hillside by a very thick ...
(17th August 2006)
I think now is when I stop raving about Chinese food, because yesterday's bowel affliction has become nausea, body-bending stomach pains and a general feeling of faintness, weakness and pathetic-ness. I once got giardia in India, and I would rather never have it again, so the services of the hotel doctor were called upon to determine whether intestine-stripping antibiotics would be required. He arrived less ...