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China is a fantastic country. I spent 6 weeks there between the 7th and 8th months 2007. My reason for visiting was that I went as part of a group to study advanced clinical skills at an hospital of chines medicine in Jinan, Shandong province. Following this one month I and two other friends stayed in China whilst the rest of our group returned home to Australia.

Together we visited Zhengzhou, Guoliangcun, Xinxiang, Shaolin, Luoyang and went back to beijing. In Beijing I had my passort confiscated and was interrogated by the PSB (the chinese public security bureau) for a good number of hours.

It went like this. When I applied for my visa I ticked the 30 day visa box and not the 60 day box. I realised this and meant to do something about having it extended whilst I was in Jinan. I didn't, instead I checked up online and came to the, incorrect, conclusion that as long as I overstayed less than 10 days then there would be no problem as I went to exit the PRC. Incorrect. So arriving in Beijing after 15 hours of traveling overnight with no sleep, gastro and feeling quite dehydrated I went to check in somewhere. They said, "yes yes, we have a room, pay now" and so I did. They then said "please wait 5 minutes for the room to be made up" and all of a sudden a guy from the PSB and a police officer were busting my arse about my visa having expired the day before. Not cool. They took me to a station and gave me a good and thorough interrogation. What was my purpose for being in China, have I performed millitary service, so fourth and so on.... geez, I was feeling pretty ill and it went on for a while. Then the 'nice guy' drove me to the Beijing Municiple PSB where I filled out a self-criticism, stood in a line for an hour watching people bursting into tears as their applications for visas were turned down on technicalities (meaning another week in China for them) and found out that I too would have to wait one week before picking up my passport. I was planning to leave China 2 days later and so I had to change my plans.

Inner Mongolia had been calling me toward it for quite some time and I used my unexpected week to go there and knock about the countryside for a while. I saw grasslands, pagodas, villiages, cities and Inner Mongolia's 60 Year Achievement - The new museum in Hohot which had recently opened and still had finishing touches being done on it. My ticket was number 7500 something and I took hundreds of photographs planning to make a special report on the new museum of inner mongolia on photoblog.com

Unfortunately I had 2 photographic disasters. The first one being that my memory card sizzled whilst I was in Inner Mongolia losing a good weeks worth of photographs (which is perhaps what I get for buying a SonyM2 card for much too cheap from a chinese night market) and the second being that I actually had not backed up all of my files when I formatted by hd to reinstall vista as I thought I had done. So, bye bye photographs from the shaolin temple, the 100,000 buddhas of Luo Yang and so on..... oh well... :-) hehe... anyway.

I have been back at uni for the past 6 weeks now and there is only one month until exams roll past again and then ONLY ONE YEAR UNTIL I FINISH MY COURSE AND BECOME A DOCTOR!!! Woooohoooooo, about bloody time too... though, I ought not get too excited as it is still more than one year away :-)

Thinking about it, three photographic calamties, I lost also most of the photographs taken since I returned too... oops :-) Anyone would think I know not the meaning of the word backup, but I do, I even have an external hd...... so why did I not backup my photos? Incompetence? Possibly :-)