The last time I was in Singapore was just a few months ago, after my 6 weeks in Europe. I had planned to do a few things in Singapore on the way through back to Australia but I ended up spending most of the time in my hotel room after eating a dodgy bread and butter pudding and getting some nasty food poisoning – this trip was much more enjoyable.
Oulu, I still have no idea how to pronounce it, is an interesting place. A colleague at work who had spent some time in Finland would keep correcting me.
“Oulu?”
“Oulu”
“Oulu?”
“Oulu”
The easiest way to get around Finland in winter is to fly. Unlike more southern airports, Finnish airports don’t close if there is snow, like everything else the infrastructure is built to handle it. I had a short flight from Helsinki to Oulu, and probably spent more time in the taxi and waiting at the gate that I did actually in the air.
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China is pretty big.
It covers a very diverse area, and the people from different areas are very diverse. Even beyond Hong Kong and Taiwan the concept a single unified China is something I struggled to get my head around. Our guides would often reference dynasties from hundreds of years ago and say “they unified all of China.”
China is old.
They have a recorded history going back quite a while. Though there ██████ are some notable ██████ blank spots ██████ in that history.
We visited a lot of places that were very old, or at least were old at some point. China seems to have a new found pride in its history, or █████ at least █████ parts of ████ it.
On the way to the Great Wall we visited the Ming Tombs. Our guide explained that a number of the tombs were destroyed during the cultural revolution. What was left hadn’t been completely excavated.
We flew with Qantas into Beijing from Sydney. Technically we started in Melbourne, but the international leg departed from Sydney. We had tried to get Qantas to let me join the flight in Sydney, instead of flying down to Melbourne, and then back up to Sydney again. But they said no, at least not without paying $1500 to change my ticket.
