The highest point of the pass was 4,000m (13,000 ft) above sea level; the sky was a stunningly deep blue and we saw yaks grazing. The base of the mountain was 3,200m (10,500 ft); ten minutes in a cable car later we were at 3,500m (11,500 ft).
EPIC was a 2.5 day conference – that’s 50 hours to cram in 5 worship sessions, 3 talks and a LOT of activities. There were 100 participants. I led a worship band of boys – they live in four cities, and come from the US, UK, New Zealand, and Korea.
Siem Reap is 6 hours from Phnom Penh, on small two lane roads through rice paddies, wooden stilt houses, palm trees, haystacks, and skinny cows. We stopped to buy snacks – fried tarantulas, bugs, pineapple, green mango with chili salt.
Moganshan is a mountain resort area near Hangzhou. It was settled by missionaries in the late 1800s as a retreat from the hot, humid Shanghai weather. Wealthy foreigners built sprawling houses with tennis courts and swimming pools.
We were put on buses and taken around the corner to an airport hotel for the night. We showed ID and gave our boarding passes in exchange for room keys. Later a woman came knocking on doors to call us down to the cafeteria for dinner.
The scenery along the Li river was wonderful – huge bamboo stands along the riverside dwarfed the boats, then were dwarfed by the karsts that reared up behind them. At times, wisps of cloud swept along the karsts – it was so beautiful!
My family came to Beijing to celebrate my 30th birthday with me – my parents, my sisters, my brother in law and his brother. They arrived in four different lots, and so they didn’t all do the same things in Beijing, but it was still a really great time!
I first visited Jiuzhaigou National Park in China’s Sichuan province with my parents in October 2009. I was surprised at how different my second experience was! It was early summer as opposed to Autumn, so there was a big colour difference.
Our 10 hour bus ride up the Min River valley from Chengdu to Songpan and across a long plateau and then down into Jiuzhaigou in Sichuan province – more interesting than it sounds!
Yu Gardens were as beautiful as I remembered, and it was my first time to visit the City Gods temple.
Stefan is one of my Beijing kids; he has been living in Singapore the last two years while doing his compulsory national service there (6 weeks to go!) He was at the airport to pick me up when I arrived despite the fact that my plane landed before 5:30am. We went back to his family’s…
The second leg of my trip was spent in Western Australia. For those unfamiliar with Australian geography, WA is twice the size of Alaska, more than three times the size of Texas, more than ten times the size of the UK. And it is home to less than two and a half million people. If there…
Stories From Tanya 