Apologies!

For any of you out there who are still holding onto the hope of seeing some holiday snaps, that must have seemed like a long night (and it’s not over yet!).

To explain - for the week prior to staying at the Whisky Society Hotel we had been sleeping in Japanese style beds, which are pretty much like kipping on the floor at your friend’s house and we all know we are too old for that these days! So we took the opportunity to sleep in when we found a bed with an old fashioned mattress and thought, no worries, we’ll put the photos up at the airport or when we get to Beijing… mmmm…. this would have worked had the Chinese Government not scuppered our plans!!

The Chinese Government in its wisdom have currently banned access to Facebook and Blogspot (which you've probably heard about). Now, if I was at home I would pretty much support the banning of Facebook but protecting 1.3 billion Chinese from being exposed to our blog has been a bit of a pain! And we are still in China, (Hong Kong at the moment) so in the interests of international diplomacy we’ll be leaving the Chinese blog updates until we are elsewhere (we have no wish to be detained to discuss these with the powers that be!).

However, to give you a little insight into how things have been going in China, here’s a wee example of how we’ve been coping with the ‘communication barrier’. We went into a ‘stationary’ shop when in Xi’an to buy an envelope, as I had a lovely complaint letter waiting to be sent off to Sony UK. So Graham got started on the obligatory mimes, which he thought aptly depicted the ‘licking and sealing of an envelope’ - only to be taken to the back of the shop and shown a Mouth Organ!!! (this still makes me chuckle). And, of course, Graham being Graham, he played a wee tune on the Mouth Organ before opting to draw some pictures to explain that we really wanted an envelope.

As it turned out we had been standing in front of the envelopes all along, but the whole Mouth Organ interpretation had greatly amused us on 2 accounts - 1) why was the ’paper’ shop selling Mouth Organs in the first place?, and 2) why did the lady in the shop think… aaahhhh… ‘Westerners’, they’re always looking to buy a Mouth Organ??? Very odd…although, things haven’t really improved and we now only wish that buying a train ticket was as easy as buying a Mouth Organ!! (note - we also realised the following day when at the Post Office that they glue down their envelopes here - so the “licking an envelope” mime didn’t really travel well anyway!).

But going back to the blog - we’ve loads to tell you, so here’s the rest of the Japanese updates and as I mentioned earlier the China ones will be posted in a few days when we land in Oz. And, we’re just going to put up some photos now too……promise…..