Our excitement about heading to China hit a slight hiccup with the recall last month of frozen berries contaminated by untreated sewage. Our dilemma…what can we eat safely and how can we avoid becoming sick while we are there?

I guess we just need to be careful and keep our well-washed fingers crossed.

We fly out tomorrow evening for Shanghai where we will spend three nights. We will be totally on our own and our plan will be to explore the neighbouring area to our hotel which I chose specifically for its location to a metro station and site seeing spots. The photo I have included in this post (which I have borrowed from the web) will allow a good comparison to what it really is like. We are expecting a fair bit of smog, but we may be pleasantly surprised.

We catch a train from Shanghai to Yichang East to meet up with others going on a cruise UP the Yangtze River. We spend five nights on the ship.

I have booked two private tours following the cruise, one in Chongqing and one in Xian. Our final stop is Beijing and we join a larger organised tour for a five day program before flying back to Brisbane, landing on Friday 27 March.

The drop in the value of the Aussie Dollar impacted the final cost of the holiday, but at the moment my challenge to beat the cost of advertised tour companies for a similar experience is definitely on track.

We picked up our China Visas a fortnight ago – these cost almost $100 each and took two trips to Brisbane to organise them, but at least that is one hiccup I think we have covered.

I am expecting a few challenges while we are way, the biggest one being we know about 5 phrases in Chinese, which I personally think is very poor on our part. I suggested to Michael that he should take responsibility for learning the language as his contribution to the trip. I did enrol and complete a four week online Chinese culture and language program at the start of the year. Unfortunately, I did not retain too much. I do however know not to wear a green cap as that means your spouse is cheating on you. Could come in handy!

Hopefully there will be good wifi in the places we stay to allow me to keep you posted about our experiences.

Zài jiàn – 再見/再见 – Goodbye

(Or in my phonetics ………         ZY-GEAN)