Author: samuel-thorpe@live.com.au

So if you follow my Instagram, you will have noticed that I infact have bought a new PC! When you buy a new PC (for those of you who are uncool enough to not be a part of the PC MASTER RACE!)there is a lot of redownloading and authenticating (are you a robot?), chasing passwords down and just a whole lot of remembering. Now my brain…does not like to remember. This makes the process of logging back into all my shit that much more difficult. Plus! On top of that is the fact that we live in China. A place notorious for making things just that little bit harder when it comes to the internet. Not to say that it’s impossible, just a bit more fun!

*cough*

Anyway now that my PC is sort of set up I have made contact with some friends at home in an easier way. Thank the gods for discord! It makes things feel a little more homely.

Now, on to the juicy stuff. I’ve been sick! My lungs have decided that breathing is for wimps and have instead insisted that I be blowing out huge chunks of snot and lung bits. It’s been a great experience.

We also met one of our neighbour who happens to own a massage palour! She gave us a lovely discount on our first massage and it was just amazing.

We met some of Claire’s fellow colleges and went out to dinner to a few lovely little places, including in the Former French Concession. The below photos are of a little market that we explored.

This place is just giving up more and more of its true splendor. We recently walked past the Louis Vuitton ship made out of what looks like part hull and part luggage. The crowds around this store to just have a photo taken in front of it was simply absurd.

And finally we come to today. We are currently sitting at home relaxing while we wait for Typhoon Dolphin to hit south of Shanghai. There hasn’t really been any rain or much wind yet so hopefully it ain’t too bad!

Talk soon all! xx

S.

As the title suggests we have finally settled in to the apartment :D. It’s an absolutely lovely two bedroom place on the 11th floor in a district called Jing’An. We are about 15 minutes from the CBD and it is delightful!

The last couple of days have been a wild ride. Let’s start with the day we got into the apartment. We were picked up by some friendly ladies from Claire’s work and a driver who helped us load our ungodly amount of luggage into a van. We then took the roughly twenty minute drive in sweltering heat and finally arrived at an incredibly shabby looking set of apartment blocks. The first thought was…uh oh. What on earth have we gotten ourselves into. I was very much judging the book by its cover. There were cars stacked three deep (yes literally cars parked with absolutely no way they could get out) and there was a little security post. Need less to say when we did locate our building and walk in, the feeling got a lot worse.

We took the elevator up to the 11th floor, found our door and the ladies from Claire’s work opened it up for us. Boy was I shocked when the inside of the apartment actually looked like the photos. Safe to say that we had infact made a great choice with our apartment, I was just a little too quick to judge. We have a FINGER PRINT DOOR HANDLE! The future is here!

Anyway we are now happily in our sexy apartment with a great view! Especially at night.

A fun thing to do was go to IKEA (which is honestly exactly the same as home) and buy everything we needed to stock up our apartment. I always forget exactly how much you need to buy when starting out fresh. All of the things.

In the days before we moved into our apartment we did have a little bit of extra exploration of Shanghai, including the Yuyuan Gardens which was actually pretty awesome. Although again we did this in peak heat which sort of ruined the atmosphere.

We also did some great walking around and shopping, which I have to say…there is a daaaamn lot of shopping you can do in this place. Markets for trinkets sit right next to top boutique items, with food and drink vendors scattered between. It really is such an interesting experience. One of the markets we went to was inside an old temple or something along those lines. Honestly I am not sure! Still very cool though.

Finally, we have just been doing a bit of exploring around our apartment. Nothing too wild as we have a few big days ahead of us. I have to get a medical :D. I guess to make sure I ain’t gonna be no burden on society because I am an unemployed schmuck.

Oh! And Claire found a great Australian pub called The Shed where she can watch all her Rubgy games. Those of you who know me well will be glad that, yes, they do indeed sell chicken schnitties. And boy was it damn good. Plus they sell one of my favourite beers!

Well thats me for now. Enjoy this next photo of one of the dishes we had as a side for our Korean BBQ last night. I didn’t even notice until afterwards.

Talk soon! xx

S.

P.s.

Here’s an action shot I forgot to upload when we were waiting in Hong Kong for our flight over.

Yes I’m pretty sure I am asleep there.

We made it to Shanghai baby! What an interesting city it is. Picking up from my last post. We got stuck in Hong Kong for an extra hour and a half while we waited for the plane to take off. It had already been delayed by around 25 minutes and this apparently meant we had to wait for even more flights before we could have our turn. Eventually we landed in Shanghai and was greeted with a wave of icecream melting heat. If you plan to visit Shanghai do not come in summer time….

After making it through all the usual processes with customs and what not, we were picked up by a lovely person from Claire’s new work and taken to our hotel. After that it was setting up everything, like the apps to pay on and our new sim cards. By this point I was trying not to fall asleep because it had been such a looong day.

After conking out for twelve hours, we woke up and decided that it was time to explore our new city! That…was a mistake. It was 38C and about 90% humidity. So lets say there was a lot of sweat and three showers throughout the day. We did get to see some incredible sights though! Including The Bund, which is a very iconic skyline of buildings across the main river. As well as the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street (thanks google) which was just a huge shopping street. While we were going through in the day it was actually rather quiet. Little did I know, and that I would find out later, was that every man and his dog seems to come out when it isn’t blazing with the heat of a thousand suns. I am talking fighting through waves of bodies. Being claustrophoic doesn’t help but at least off the main shopping street it was much better.

Getting across the river was a fun little experience including a sightseeing tunnel, that yes was a little gimmicky but still kinda cool. It went under the river and took around 10 mintues.

We also went to the Pearl Tower and did a river cruise. This being now night time but still incredibly warm and sticky. Both were very cool. The river cruise was fun because we went there at sunset and got to watch all the buildings start to turn on light shows. It felt a little like being at Vegas except it wasn’t trying to entice people to come gamble.

The other thing I have to mention is how incredibly clean the city is. It’s mind bloggling that they can keep a city of 23 million people basically spotless. While we did see a few cleaners walking around picking up the odd trash it was still impressive to say the least.

Anyway, this blog does lack a few photos. I am having technical difficulties so I shall be posting them on my Instagram.

Hope this was enjoyable! Talk soon xx

S.

P.s. The title is the greaterer migration because i thought it was funny and everyone would be wondering if they missed the greater migration part 2. You didn’t. Or did you…?

We have finally landed in Hong Kong. What an absolute beast of an airport. It’s honestly huge! This won’t be a big update. The flight was pretty plesant but we did have to leave Perth at 12:10am. A first for me leaving so late in the evening.

Surprisingly it only takes around 8 hours to fly from Perth to Hong Kong. In my head it was way longer. My entertainment for the flight was the first Matrix (a classic) and Wall-E. Something I haven’t watched in a very long time. Wholesome movie. Claire on the other hand attempted to rewatch Project Hail Mary and then fell asleep all over me because we had a spare seat in the middle. Am currently running on maybe 2.5 hours sleep and feeling ALIVE! The journey has now very much sunk in. We are doing this baby! And there ain’t no turning back now!

I have told my friends countless times that I have always wanted to live overseas and enact all the millions of plans that my brain seems to construct daily (just ask my two best friends). But this is the real deal. The t’s crossed and the I’s dotted. Except not that I because it’s a captial.

Now we are waiting for our next flight with an incredible view of the surrounding mountains that are drifting in and out of the fog. Truely a wonderous place. There will be an updated blog on Hong Kong as we will be coming back in roughly two months. But for now just imagine lush green mountains, a bit of light rain and a whoooole lot of humidity.

Here’s to hoping I am able to get some sleep on the second flight. I’ll work out how to add a Gallery so I can keep posting photos. But for now its just text.

Laters! xx

S.

Tell you what. If you ever decide to drive from anywhere in Australia to Perth….be prepared. Pick your driving partner carefully (thankfully mine is the same brand of weird as me) and load up audio books, songs and whatever else you think you need to help you stay sane. As Scar says…Be Prepared! Except in this case you aren’t taking over Simba’s birthrite, you are instead driving 2700 kilometres across some of the most interestingly bland country full of a shit load of NOTHING!

This is my version. We started in Adelaide at 7am. The car fully loaded and packed with our whole lives. Preparing to make one of the Great Migrations that seems to attract way too many retired caravaners. While it was 3 days of 10 hour plus driving, it was totally worth it. Whales are something I never thought I would see on the long drive over. We infact saw about 20 of them in the great bight. They are far larger than I remembered. Like honestly huge. They apparently hang out in the Bight because its fairly safe, there’s absolutely nothing there and their little calfs (which are also the size of a bloody 4 wheel drive) can learn to live in peace. It was just amazing to take a small 20 minute detour to see these incredible monsters of the sea. When you seem them its not hard to imagine where all the myths of magical creatures of the sea came from.

I digress. We spent three days trekking across our beautiful country to make it to Perth where the other half was born and raised. I am currently sitting in the living room writing this out and slowly counting down the hours until we jump on our plane and make our next great migration. Although I suspect that sitting in a plane for 10 hours and travelling four times the distance might be alittle easier on my body. My stupid circulatory system makes my feet puff up something fierce though if I don’t move around so I better make sure I do that. They (my toes) seriously look like little sausages if I don’t. And no I won’t post my feet pics to prove it. So fear not.

Anyway back to the trek. We listened to two lovely audio books by Andrew Hunter Murray (from our favourite podcast No Such Thing As A Fish) which really did help keep our sanity. The first one was called “A beginners guide to breaking and entering”. I won’t pitch it here but its a great listen. It really helped zone me out while I was driving at 130kms an hour and feeling like we were getting nowhere, until suddenly we were stopping to get some surprisingly not that expensive fuel, buying a drink and of course going to the toilet. Then it was back to seeing a whole not of interesting nothing.

At one point I decided we should play a game of Eye Spy which honestly was a bit of great fun and burnt up some extra time. We also saw Camels! Which was so awesome because I knew that Australia has the biggest camel population outside of their native countries. The journey did sort of all blend together. Except I can vividly remember driving for three hours on a dirt road….yes three hours, I am not exaggerating here, to get to a place called Wave Rock. All so I could do a stupid surf pose (worth it!) and keep on driving.

It was worth it. Everything about this drive. The countless hours of passing landscape that ever so slowly changed. Seeing the whales and camels and stopping at little towns in the middle of dingo woop woop (a great way of measuring if I do say so myself). There’s just something about a road trip.

Well thats all for this post. Talk soon xx.

S.

P.s. I edited this and changed all the I’s into capitals because the other half was annoyed that they were all lower case. Something about proper grammar or whatever. Blame my english teachers.