On our way back from New Zealand we had an 11 hour stopover in Guangzhou, China. We knew we could have a half-day rate room in the posh airport resort for $50. We'd done it on the way there, even took the subway to the city centre for a bit of sightseeing. But we're nothing if not adventurous (well one of us is anyway) and decided this time to try the freebie hotel on offer from the airline. After hanging about briefly waiting for another flight to arriv...

Stock feedingAn old man sitting on his little stool on the footpath in the main street of Dunhuang, with his three goats tethered to a street tree and munching on the weeds growing round its base.Locking upStaff at the Dunhuang railway station were busy preparing the train for the return journey. Passengers in the waiting room were watching the scurrying about on the platform through big plate glass doors. A disabled passenger was ushered through to board the tra...

We obviously weren't going to make it to Tibet. With the new placement in Vietnam back to back with only a three week break in between, we weren't going to have the anticipated month to travel after the semester ended - and Tibet was still closed anyway. The next best option was a Tibetan Semi Autonomous Region, so we decided to make a final excursion to Xiahe in the Gannon Tibetan Autonomous Region in the south of Gansu.We caught the bus, there being no ...

Just before leaving Perth I was given the book Journeys on the Silk Road by Joyce Morgan and Conrad Walters. A fabulous book, I enjoyed it immensely. It tells the story of Aurel Stein's travels to Dunhuang and, some would say, plundering of the ancient Mogao Grottoes. I was excited to realize Dunhuang is in Gansu, the province we’re living in and visiting the caves has been a priority since we arrived. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t make it,...

Winter hadn't quite been shaken off when we left Lanzhou to go on our holiday with the family, but when we returned it was definitely gone. We’re back to our daily routine and it’s hard to remember how cold it was. The weather now is hot, dry and dusty. Actually its not that hot compared to home (30-34 degrees isn’t really a heatwave for us), but given we get about on foot a lot it feels hot. The roadworks below us generate a lot of dust too...