Sunday, April 21. Travel day, but a great day.

The cruise is over and it was wonderful. We came to China with blank expectations and every day we are amazed at this place.

We had four days mixing and mingling with Aussies, New Zealanders, Americans and a few British. Good to be with them and great to be on our own again.

At the moment we are in the airport awaiting a one hour fight to Guilin: countryside I am told and hopeful of.

I had a great deal of difficulty with the internet in the first few hotels but on the ship and in this airport all is great.

We have a total of five domestic flights on this trip. It seems a lot but for some reason they are a bit more relaxed than in other countries. All the airports we have been in are new, super clean and we feel very comfortable in them.

I find the pitch and chatter of the Chinese a bit annoying sometimes. They seem to have a different sense of privacy and personal space than we do. It is a good thing we cannot understand them or it would be worse. If they were speaking English, French or German I feel that I would be more annoyed, not sure why. Right now it is just a background noise.

We have been really spoiled on this trip. Being a party of two we are so flexible that we can do basically what we want with the car and guide. We do enjoy the conversations with the guides that we have, good insight into this country.

I am also continually amazed by the modernness of just about everything here, from infra structure to how young people interact: the same as at home, yet the country is steeped in tradition from ancient China. The Yangzi River Cruise was a trip back in time. The ships are based on old time river cruisers, narrow outside walkways and looking at the country-side, it could be 100 or 1000 years ago.

The cities, although modern, contrast to the life of some farmers who are farming the same way as 200 years ago. However there are farms that use modern machinery. The country is losing it's farmland as the need for high-rise condos increases. Young people are lured to the cities and leave the farms so the government has incentives for them to stay on the farms: they can have more than one child and they do not pay income tax and so on.

China's biggest problem is not the outside world but could be buried by it's sheer numbers, pollution and lack of home grown food.

All the foregoing are just my thoughts as I sit and kill time awaiting our flight...

Last comment: Once again, looking at the people in the airport, they are clean, sharply dressed and tolerant of other people, all good attributes.