After an intense 1.5 week of getting to know Chengdu and the colleagues there, it was time to depart again. But not before taking care of two important issues.

First of all taking stock of the ridiculous amount of soaps and shampoos and such that you get when staying in a hotel like this. If you open a soap or shampoo, and not even touch it further, the next day it will be thrown away and replaced with a new one. Such an environmentally unfriendly waste. So every day I put everything in my suitcase and only got it out when needing to use it, saving the rest up for use later.

Secondly, and far more importantly, we took off our rings. Despite it having been coming for a long time, it still got very emotional when it really happened. I tucked them safely away, to look at some time on a rainy day.

We then went to the airport, had our final coffee together, and shared a mooncake. We both departed from separate terminals, so we waved goodbye and went our separate ways. Veronika back to Seoul. Me back to Melbourne.

A long but pleasant couple of business class flights was ahead of me. With a 6 hour layover in Bangkok. Departing Chengdu it was amazing how visible the pollution layer was when lifting out of it with the plane. And when we approached Bangkok airport a rainbow appeared, and the lounge was also still there (surprise surprise! ;) ) so it was quite survivable. Eventually we landed back in Melbourne with some clear skies allowing me to have a great view of Victoria from the sky for a bit.

I swiftly went onwards to home. Took out the nice tea sets I bought in Chengdu (One traditional one for me, and one a bit more western-sized as wedding present for Andrea & Jon. Because next stop: US and A! Very nice! High-five!

Part of getting to know Chengdu was to go and experience the Panda Breeding Base. The pride of Chengdu, and pride of China. It was a beautiful day, where another taxi driver tried to rip us off by driving the wrong way around town, and I let him because whatever.

The Panda Breeding Base is a large green area with many open outside enclosures for both the well known black-and-white Giant Panda, and for the totally unrelated but just as cute Red Panda. The pandas get a LOT of space in the park, and even more food. Really, the giant pandas were just sitting in piles and piles of bamboo, doing nothing but eating... or just lying on the floor being passed out. The red pandas were mainly lying around eating what looked like squash, but some were walking a bit too, making them just a bit more active than the giant pandas.
Regardless... they were all very adorable. And there were a whole bunch of just born tiny toddler pandas in the nursery too.

Having started off the stay in Chengdu by tasting some of the surroundings, come Monday it was time to head off to the office. But not before having had some breakfast in the hotel. Once again it was clear how over-the-top they tried to make the place. There were bird cages with very cute looking tweeting exotic birds placed all around the breakfast tables every morning, as well as a lady was playing a Chinese string instrument while a few people were performing Tai Chi in the atrium.

As it turned out the office was pretty nearby the hotel, but every day I had to face two problems:

1. The taxi drivers didn't want to go there because it was too close, and thus too cheap a ride.
   
2. The taxi drivers didn't seem to have a clue where it was exactly.
   

However I managed to get there every day eventually, courtesy of my very helpful taxi-driver-instructor Veronika, who then either went back to the hotel or continued her journey exploring the city.

My working days mainly consisted of knowledge sharing from me to the teams in Chengdu and vice versa, experiencing the way they work and helping out getting a couple of projects moving. Also each day a different group of colleagues would take me to lunch. Unfortunately for the people on the first 2 days I had caught something bad in my food or the water during the journey across the mountain, and I felt really bad, rendering me nearly unable to eat. It was so bad that on the Monday evening, when some guys took me to see the beautiful Jinli Street, I eventually ended up throwing up in the bushes! Luckily the guys were really helpful and got me some medication from a pharmacy. And can I tell you: YAY for Chinese medicine! The night that followed was basically the worst one I can remember I ever had, regarding intestine troubles, but come the following afternoon I was 100% ok again. I could hardly believe it, but the medication had given me a full recovery within 12 hours!

There was also some time for exploring the city during lunch breaks and at the end of the day. One of the places seen was the Global Centre, which is the worlds largest building in terms of floor space. To give you a rough idea: it's nearly the size of all of Monaco (420 vs 499 acres).
We went to visit the centre of town, entering with the underground via Tianfu Square, where I ended up face to face with a C&A clothing shop. Of all places... I guess that also in China "C&AAAAAAA IS TOCH VOORDEEEEELIGEEEEEEER!!!!!" (Dutch inside joke.)
Stumbled upon a building that seems to have a loooot to do with grain. We walked through a shopping mall where we were warned "Do not please on manage area frolic!" and noticed the striking contrast between old communist built structures and the new capitalism induced ones. All in all, every day was a great experience.

On the Thursday there was a special meal served in the hotel, because it was apparently 'Chinese Valentines Day'. So there was an Eastern European girl playing the violin and singing, there were loads of all kinds of food, free cocktails, and I took the opportunity to take a little bit of wasabi with my sushi... ;-)

The Friday was the last working day in the office, and the team took me out to two places. During the day we went for a tour of the Tianfu Tech Park where the office is located. Part of the tour included driving around part of the tech park in an electric bus. It was a nice experience. And as my Chinese colleague Gregory shouted out in excitement: "For 5 years I have seen this bus driving around, but never had I been on it! THANK YOU STEFFEN!!!!" which caused some hilarity.
In the evening the team had a teambuilding event to which me and Veronika got invited too. Basically it meant having dinner in a restaurant and then drinks at a bar. The restaurant is the biggest I have ever seen. I don't know where to begin to describe it, so I won't really try. I just know I have only seen 2 floors of it. One floor, housed a few hundred tables, and the other at least 32 private dining rooms of varying sizes. Ours was quite large, and Gregory once more shouted out in excitement: "This is such an exciting day! First I have been in a bus I had never been in before, and now I am sitting at the biggest table I have ever seen in my life!!! THANK YOU STEFFEN!!!" Not sure how I am to thank for the table, but why not. The table was truly pretty damn large, actually!
After the restaurant we went to a German Beer Bar, where there were more varieties of German beer than I've seen in a German supermarket. As we wanted to get up early in the morning to go see some Pandas we left the team after a first drink to get some sleep and let them enjoy their evening together.

The following morning, after a short 6 hour sleep, which was still an hour later than we wanted, we got up again from our very basic beds in our very basic room to continue our journey. What a joy to wake up in such surroundings. We spent a few moments looking around the temple, making some photos, and then continued our way, following the path past the little restaurant we had eaten at just the night before.
When just on our way we encountered the lady from the restaurant with her daughter, carrying empty baskets on their back. They had just walked 25km total, just to chuck their rubbish away. What a life.
We ourselves continued our journey and soon came upon a cosy little house next to a waterfall, where we went to have some breakfast, prepared for us by the man living there. We (Veronika) ended up having a conversation with the old couple, and after a bit we continued feeling a bit refreshed. The long walk from the day before was well present in our legs though...

The scenery was still beautiful, but the rain also started to set in. Luckily we had a big umbrella, and me a rain jacket. The monkeys didn't seem to mind the rain though, but the cat we encountered at one of the temples looked veeeeery grumpy. :-)
Our legs started to feel extremely heavy, when following all the steps down, and it was a huge relief to finally sit in the bus back to Chengdu. On the way I spotted a Unilever facility. Netherlands, yeah! Back in the hotel some food and a hot bath were seriously welcome.

To get an impression of the endless steps, here's a short video outtake. Now imagine this all day long, 2 days in a row... :-D

The second day of the trip, and the first full dat in China, was going to be spent in traveling to Mount Emei and ascending it. Or at least part of the way. A short weekend was probably going to be too short to walk all the way to the Golden Summit. Mount Emei is one of the 4 sacred Buddhist mountains in China, and covered in temples. It promised to become a memorable experience.
The journey first took us with a taxi to the eastern train station of Chengdu. There we couldn't get any train because they were all sold out. So we went searching for a bus, which we couldn't find. Luckily Veronika's Chinese once again proved to be amazing and she got directions to a city bus, from which we at some point had to change onto another city bus, from which we had then to change onto a regional bus at some small bus station where we first had to buy a ticket to the town of Emeishan.
Once the bus arrived at Emeishan people on the bus told us it was actually possible to stay on the bus and drive onwards to the mountain for a small additional fee. So we showed our ticket to the driver and asked how much it would be to the mountain. The driver was surprised by our ticket, exclaiming "How did you get this ticket!? You're foreigners!!" And I was surprised as well because it was cheaper than the ticket of the Chinese people next to us.
So anyway, we paid a few more RMB and drove onwards to the mountain. It took us a bit of figuring out how to go from there, and actually took a small local bus onwards to the actual spot we wanted to start our climb from, and set off through the masses of Chinese tourists...

The first part of the journey was littered with Chinese tourists. Thousands and thousands of them. But as the path became more remote and challenging nearly all of them disappeared. We soon encountered the wild monkeys we had been warned about. And the warnings were not to be laughed at. Some monkeys were really cute. But many were extremely aggressive, trying to attack us for food. While I took a photo of some cute monkeys, Veronika got a near heart attack because a monkey suddenly dropped on top of her and her backpack. Bamboo sticks, or on our case a big long umbrella, were absolutely necessary to keep the most aggressive ones at bay.

We were amazed at the paths. The entire path up the mountain is extremely well maintained. There is not a single bit of sloping path, but everything is paved with stone hewn steps. My estimations are that in total during the two days we climbed about 10.000 steps. People estimate that to the top of the mountain is about 13.000 steps, putting the 1.000 steps at the Dandenongs near Melbourne in Australia to shame.

The journey was amazing. The views simply stunning. So green everywhere. However, once we were at the Hongchunping temple we underestimated the time and effort it would take us to the Xianfeng temple, and set off on the final leg of the day... The never ending steps got extremely steep, and it got nearly pitch black at some point. But we battled on, and persevered. After an hour of walking in the dark we arrived at Xianfeng temple, where a little restaurant was sitting just outside the steps up to the temple entrance.

We indulged in some freshly made food and tea, before heading into the temple where we were soon fast asleep, hoping to get up early enough for another day of walking and the journey back to Chengdu again.

This last August work was taking me to our office in Chengdu, in the heart of China. We are working on building out a front-end software delivery practice there, and part of that is establishing the relationships and getting to know the ways both sides work and what the cultural differences are, in order to strengthen our cooperation. Needless to say, I didn't complain about this assignment, and off I went!

Traveling in business class is pretty much a necessity when traveling such long distances. So great to actually get some proper sleep on the way. Especially since my flight took off at midnight. Having a real meal instead of hospital food is appreciated too. And access to the lounge during a 6 hour layover in Bangkok certainly helped kill the time. Although... Veronika helped a bit with that too. Since she was living in Seoul, South Korea, for the summer, we took the opportunity upon us to meet in Chengdu since flights between Soul and Chengdu cost very little. However she unfortunately missed her flight from Seoul, because they refused to check her in 55 minutes before departure. This meant we had to scramble to book some other flight while fighting with both our intermittent overloaded airport wifi connections. In the end she managed though, thanks to her amazing comprehension of Mandarin.

After I arrived in Chengdu I checked out my hotel, which was a nothing-special price for western standards, but for the middle of China it provided an experience that was well above and beyond. I dare even say extravagant. I was a bit blown away, because I didn't expect this at all. The bed in the room was absolutely massive. Big enough for 3 or 4 people. And the hotel was surrounded by little streets that were made to look authentic., but were clearly very new.

Later in the evening I went to meet Veronika at the airport. We stuck her suitcase in the back of the taxi, and drove back to town. But halfway, the driver stopped on the motorway, got out, took the suitcase from the back, and put it on the front seat. We were both looking strangely at the driver, and Veronika asked the man if everything was OK. He said all was fine. But I noticed that the taxi meter had suddenly jumped from 16 to 126 RMB. The trip was supposed to cost about 42 total, which I knew because I had already taken it twice that day. We decided that as soon as we arrived I would jump out and take the suitcase, while Veronika would stay in the car and talk to the driver, making sure he wouldn't be able to hold the luggage hostage. Nearing the hotel, which has a private car entrance for taxis to stop right at the front door, the driver was reluctant to go in there. We ordered him to go anyway. As soon as we were there I jumped out, grabbed the suitcase and at the same time called hotel security over. The driver got very nervous and hammered on a key to reset the meter, which now showed 174 RMB, to 0. Given that the meter now showed 0, I was inclined to not pay anything, but decided to just pay the real fee while the driver was still trying to convince us it had to be 60 RMB. Tough luck, dude. You picked the wrong customers to try and cheat.

So. A month or so ago I got my internet installed. With a different company, that seems a lot more capable. Good feature of the deal is that they threw in 6 months of free Netflix. Since I wanted to sign up anyway... that's a nice thing.
Signing up for Netflix you get the first month for free. Together with the other 6 months, that gives me free Netflix till sometime January! Awesome.
So I have been checking it out this week. Movies watched so far, in order of appearance:

• The Dark Knight Rises (Because I still hadn't seen it)
• RoboCop (The new one)
• Man of Steel (I love Amy Adams)
• Frozen (What's that hype about? One of Disney's more mediocre ones...)
• Flipped (Cute)
• Sweet Home Alabama (Reese Witherspoon still one of my favourites)
• License to wed (Didn't know this Robin Williams one yet!)
• Mona Lisa Smile (Powerful movie)
• New in town (Bridget Jones lost a loooot of weight! Meow...)
• Leap Year (Did I say I love Amy Adams?)
• Up (Because Pixar!)
• Saving Mr Banks (Now I MUST see Disney's Mary Poppins!)

So. TTFN! Tata for now! Got to be Netflixing along!

I got a bike! Yay!!!

Or to be exact... I already had a bike! Yay! And it's finally here! Double yay! Just like all my other stuff!!! MASSIVE YAY!!!!!

But more about the arrival of my goods later. As soon as the moving in was finished, I got to my bikes, and went to ready my brand new Johnny Loco Dutch Delight Beach Cruiser for the journey to work. I'll get to the mountainbike later. It's a pretty flat journey to work, so the 3-gear back-pedal brake Johnny Loco is absolutely splendid. Here it is, in its morning glory state. I didn't have time to affix the crate at the front, so got a backpack and cycled to work!

All went well. And it's absolutely awesome that the cycle path that ends up right at the bicycle entrance of the office come right by my home. Half an hour of leisurely paddling and that's it!
I noticed a lot of cyclists on the way, and the cycle storage and changing rooms at work are absolutely overloaded. But all bicycles I've seen are of the mountain bike, all terrain bike, or racing bike varieties. Everybody is wearing their sporty gear and trying to go as fast as they can. I was quite standing out sitting back instead of leaning forward, wearing my suit, happily paddling along. However, check out what I found parked right next to my bike in the office cycle storage area when I went to go back home:

A tasty 'lekker' Dutch lady bike! That must have crawled up on my Dutch bike on purpose. We'll see if they meet up more frequently, and who knows, there might be little baby bikes in the future!

The way back home was a bit less fortunate though:

• Something went wrong with the paddle on the right and got dislodged and all crooked, making cycling very hard. It took a bit of effort back home to take it out and put it back in again. The thread in the bike is quite damaged, so we'll see if it holds tomorrow, otherwise I'll already have to replace a part of the bike :'(
• I was carrying some shopping in a plastic bag, and I rediscovered how much I hate having a plastic bag hanging from the steering bar.
• The path that was just fine in the morning, was flooded on the way back! Luckily it wasn't too hard to find an alternative way around.

I also realised I really don't like backpacks. So after I fixed the paddle I got to fixing the crate on the bike (tie-wraps yeah!) and check out the Black Beauty:

I'll see if I can fix something like a GoPro cam on my helmet sometime soon so I can record the journey to work and share it with all you fine people.

TTFN! Ta ta for now! Got to be bouncing along!

I've done quite a bit of travelling by plane in my life so far. My first flight was to Denmark during my first year as a student. I used to travel between The Netherlands and England on a weekly basis for a few years. I visited Chicago in the USA a couple of times. Work took me as far as India at some point. And after my wife had been away for half a year I had to go see her all the way in China about a year ago.
But never had I travelled as far as Australia. And never had I experienced real jetlag. I can say now that that situation has changed. Shifting 10 timezones forward within 24 hours is something your body really doesn't like.
I tried to stay awake during the 24-hour journey so that by the time I would arrive at my hotel, at nighttime, I would be able to fall asleep and wake up in the morning like a normal person. But that didn't work out as planned. I did have a few short hours of sleep on the plane anyway. Not that I think those had any effect on my sleep in the hotel. Despite being really tired I woke up at 6 o'clock in the morning already after just 4 hours of sleep.
I managed to get through the first day but was extremely tired at the end. I tried to stay awake as long as I could, but fell asleep too early anyway. I slept 7 hours in total, but my sleep was broken up by me simply waking up sometime deep at night.
Same routine the next day. I actually slept 9 hours. Yay! But still fell asleep too early, woke up in the middle of the night, and then awake too early in the morning again.
By the time it turned weekend I managed to sleep in one go through the night for the first time. But I'm still much too tired during the day. As I am writing this it is 17:12 on the Sunday. I got up at 6:15 in the morning, had some activities during the day, crashed back into bed close to 14:00, and just got out again at 16:30 being half asleep still.
Luckily tomorrow is Labour Day, which means nobody labours. Hopefully come Tuesday I will have settled in a fairly normal daily rhythm. They say it takes 1 day per timezone. So by the end of Wednesday things should be allright...

At long last it had come to it. The day of the great Journey had arrived. The chapter in Switzerland had come to an end, and I was ready to depart. At least, after I had filled out and quickly filed my last tax return! I got picked up by a courtesy car from Emirates Airlines. So far so smooth. At the airport it turned out that Business Class does not entitle you to unlimited luxury though. I had 54kg of checked luggage, and 3 pieces of hand luggage probably weighing about 25 or so kg total. That was too much :) But the lady form Emirates was very helpful and allowed me to repack my suitcases so the checked luggage would be 42kg total (2 over the limit) and my hand luggage was 4 items weighing about 35kg total, which is 2 items and 21kg over the limit. Why this matters, since it still goes on the same plane, is beyond me. The plane itself, an AIrbus A380, was awesome, with an amazing private 'cabin' and a free lounge bar.

The flight to Dubai took just over 6 hours. We arrived close to midnight, and I headed straight to the gate for the connecting flight. I had so much luggage there was no way I could fit in any more duty free shopping anyway. The flight to Melbourne was operated by Quantas, and I must say I really liked them. It was also an Airbus A380, sadly without a lounge bar. But their seats were very comfortable.