Xiamen December 2008

Xiamen 2008.

We headed there en route to the Phillipines. It's an hours flight from Shanghai but a big rise in temperature at this time of year. It has a colonial history so the older architecture is an interesting mix. A bit like Qingdao and Macau and the Bund in Shanghai. Xiamen used to be known as Amoy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoy.

We had a couple of days there. One of the smaller islands has a nice hill to walk up and the waterway looked a bit like the Bosphorous. If you squinted quite hard...

Downtown Xiamen as seen from one of the smaller islands

Coutyard of house on island

The hill. Can't remember the name, but it is part of a funny story about Aytun's fish. I bought Aytun a couple of freaky headed fish for her birthday in November and we couldn't find anyone to look after them before going away. So, on the morning we travelled I phoned up Pepo - a Chinese speaking friend (who's from Ecuador - the plot thickens) - and got him to speak to the women in our local store to see if she would look after them for two weeks. After a few strange looks she agreed. As far as I am aware she is from Xiamen so I thought it would be nice to send her a postcard from 'home' so duly did. But, as the address was rather unclear and written in pinyin we weren't sure it would get there. It did - the Chinese postal service so tip top. And the fish were fine!

Traditional tea house

A modern junk. Not a piece of junk, but a type of boat.