From January - July 2010, we are roaming the Indian Subcontinent (and beyond, as it turned out)...

...during that period, this blog page is the temporary home of www.AwayAwhile.com.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Bathams On Hold

Our train ride to Shanghai was long but enjoyable...three straight nights on trains. Shanghai? A huge city, lots of new mixed with old. Our last five days were spent there, the final two in a five-star hotel in the city centre (thanks to hotel points leftover from my working days). We were upgraded to a deluxe suite; it was paradise, bigger than the last couple apartments I've lived in!

There's actually very little else to report. We wandered, we ate meals, we hardly took any photos. Yesterday we left: slept in the airport, a 8.5-hr flight, 4 hrs in Dubai, a 7-hr flight to Birmingham. Rebecca's parents awaited us at the airport and drove us home.

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A friend commented on an earlier update, questioning my criticism of China's development, asking whether we're seeking the past instead of appreciating the present.

The answer is no, not really. It was more of a commentary...you don't visit the UK and hang out in Birmingham or Milton Keynes; you go to old Oxford or London or Cambridge or Edinburgh, and stick to the preserved parts of those places, trusting that these old parts don't get razed for modern developments. It's that disappearance of "old" China that's somewhat bothersome to observe (from a visitor's perspective). But: we were still excited about each new place and had a great time through it all!

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So here we are, back in the UK. We'd requested the Wildings to stop at a pub so I could get a Bathams Bitter (a West Midlands ale, my favourite!) and a fish and chips shop so Rebecca could get...fish and chips. A long journey, too many airport meals, and my stomach getting Shanghai'd by something I ate a couple days ago meant that we skipped these detours and came straight home last night. We'll fit this stuff in in the coming days.

It's a cool, overcast Sunday, and the grandmas are soon heading over for dinner. We've been up early, unpacked our bags, and been off to a car boot sale already. Six months (plus a week) of travel are now behind us; time in England, Minnesota, and a move to Vancouver, Canada are all on the way.

We'll probably do an update in the next weeks to post some of our top photos on the site. If anything else interesting happens along the way, we'll mention that, too.

It's been fun.