SmaviesAdventures

Singapore, The Lion Nation Singapore is a tiny nation found at one of the southernmost points of Continental Asia. It is also one of the countries with the highest population densities in the World, Monaco narrowly beats it. Oddly though if I'm honest Singapore feels less busy than China did, admittedly this is probably because China has large spaces of sparse population whereas Singapore is essentially just one big thriving metropolis.  Tiger Jaw Succulents found at the Garden By The Bay To be completely honest I found Singapore looked fascinated but at the same time seeing that it had a higher population density than Hong Kong I was prepared to hate it. We arrived from Beijing airport in the early hours of the morning and stopped for coffee at a very suspicious establishment... Couldn't they think of a better name? But then we were on our way, straight across from one side of this small nation to the other where we were staying in what felt like a very ...

Chaoyang and the Great Wall We Climbed the Wall, I have a certificate to prove it! After travelling throughout China my parents left us to go home and we decided that we would explore another part of Beijing. It was all very exciting although the day before moving day I realized that despite changing districts we were in fact moving about a mile down the road... Olivia made a friend It certainly showed a different side to the China we had grown to love. We had moved from the sights of Zhangjiajie where we could see stunning natural scenery, to Chengdu steeped with a strong cultural vibe. Xi'an and Dongcheng both offered us an insight into China's historical past. But Chaoyangwas different, there was a very strong up and coming vibe with it's spectacular modern feel. We had also found that the quality of accommodation severely dipped (but we'll try not to talk about that, just don't stay in that area of you go to Beijing...) Olympic Area of Sanlit...

Dongcheng, History and Spirituality The gorgeous Temple of Heaven Too many people! Literally you cannot walk through the historic centre without touching at least fifty people in the space of a minute. We did however see some fantastic places and eat gorgeous food (as usual). The Black Bamboo Park Our first stop in Dongcheng was the Temple of Heaven which is a massive park like complex filled with impressive blue and green temples and many flowers and birds enriched with beautiful scenery and symbolism. The park is in an odd mushroom shape as it represents the heavens (the circle/semi circle) meeting the earth (the square) this is repeated as a motif throughout the park as the temples are often circular but on a square base, once again signifying heaven meeting earth. The Forbidden City We also ate lots of food and had some delicious dumplings, but the greatest triumph was finding a restaurant where we had tomato and egg rice, and thick spicy beef nood...

Adventures in Asia Welcome to our week long series of our Adventures through Asia. Each day we will add another link here to a post for our time in China where we were unable to blog due to the firewall they have in place. We will finally finish off this series by posting about Singapore which is our location for the duration of the time that we are writing this series. I hope that you will enjoy it. please click a link below to see a new post. 1. Hong Kong Chinese Junk ship at Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong 2. Zhangjiajie A misty morning in Zhangjiajie 3. Chengdu Red Panda in Chengdu Panda Research Base 4. Xi'an Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Terracotta Army 5. Dongcheng, Beijing The Temple of Heaven 6. Chaoyang, Beijing Ritan Park 7. Singapore Great Trees at night from Garden By The Bay In case your interested:  We did have further adventures in Asia than we write about in this short series. We also went to Japan, which is in Asia b...

Medusa's Favourite Place The South Gate to Xi'an's City Wall We got on the train from Chengdu Station to leave for Xi’an. Chengdu station is a ginormous complex on the east side of the city (there are four stations in total, one on each cardinal point). It is best described as an airport terminal as there are so many platforms in which to take off from that it is very easy to be overwhelmed. Dad and I queued for the tickets in a hall crammed full of people. One man tried to push into the line (as queueing is very different in China from England, dad kept comparing it more to rugby) and then there was a woman in the queue who literally went for him screaming no in his face while he was explaining his hurry until he moved away. We finally got on the train and were on our way to the wonders of Xi’an.                  Bell Tower in Xi'an Upon arrival we made our way to our accommodation which w...

Chengdu, Sichuan Panda monium  Olivia came dressed as a panda Our next few days were to be spent in Chengdu. Chengdu is a massive city in the Sichuan province of China. Sichuan is located towards the east of the country in the bottom left corner near to Tibet. Our first day was just us arriving, we had a little walk along the river towards our accommodation. The city was much less busy than Hong Kong was but there was still definitely a buzz to the place. Along the banks of the Funan river it is possible to see many white crane like birds. Wenshu Temple Gate Our next day was incredibly exciting, we did the terrible thing of getting up really early where we got on the metro and travelled across the city to a place called Panda avenue. From here we got onto a shuttle bus which took us all the way to the Panda Research facility. Red Panda's  In this facility are the magnificent Giant Panda, which I felt I could really relate to. They like to eat an...