Still counting down

Now down to three weeks and four days - how time flies! I went to the Chinese Consulate in Manchester last week and got a dual entry visa for China which allows me to spend two lots of thirty days in the country.

I had the last of three Japanese B Encephalitis on the 10th. Not only does it cost for the private prescription and the vaccine, the doctor also charges £50 to administer the vaccine! I must get the malaria tablets ordered before I forget. The youth hostel card was ordered on line and came within a week.

I bought the latest Lonely Planet last week and I am now busily sticking post-its in the relevant pages. There is no mention of the solar eclipse which really surprised me. I am still planning the route and each time I think it's sorted, I read another page with something absolutely unmissable to see or do. I really must knuckle down and get planning for the ten days between Shanghai and Hangzhou if nothing else.

Most of my travel essentials stay in the rucksack from trip to trip. My small water heater and a nice china mug (for my Horlicks and cup-a-soups), a nine peg rack (for drying my not-so-smalls!), sewing kit with lots of safety pins (these came in extremely useful when I got too close to a cage in Sumatra and a monkey ripped my skirt to shreds) and a tube of super glue (which has come in handy for such diverse uses as gluing on a broken teapot spout on the Trans Siberian train and soles of shoes in Spain!