Well it’s been just over four months since we returned home from Koh Phangan Island in Thailand due to unexpected circumstances and during this time we have had the chance to rest a little from the stresses of travelling, reminisce about all the great times in Asia and work on our photographs. The plan for having our photos on stock libraries is proving particularity difficult for many reasons, however selling prints of our work is now a possibility if anyone so desires a print for their wall.

We have also been lucky enough to get some paid work since returning home which is all going in the money pot for part two (continuation) of our adventures. We wanted to aim for a year travelling, so notworkrelated part two will hopefully last between 7 and 9 months. You can read an itinerary in our about section with an abridged version here…

What we know so far… London to LA flight. Two weeks in Venice Beach area. Fly to Seattle. Canadian Rockies camping tour for 15 days. Hire a vehicle in Seattle and head to the Olympic peninsula. Zig zag down the west coast dipping into oceans and hiking in national parks for 28 days or so. Meet some friends flying into San Francisco. Road-trip with them to Vegas, Grand Canyon Etc. Phoenix to see Helen’s relative. Back to LA for flight to New Zealand. Phew and that’s 2-3 months done!

We both hope you can follow our travels (which resume 3 weeks today) and enjoy them with us. The Leica and Olympus will most definitely be put through their paces once again! We will update you again soon with our now much more relaxed packing of rucksacks and pre-trip preparation.

Best regards. David and Helen xx

Last day in Shanghai and we had some catching up to do with the blog so we stayed in the hostel cafe until midday and then went out in search of some older looking parts of Shanghai. On our way to Shanghai old town and the YuYuan gardens we bought some fantastic street food in the form of potato noodles, chives and spice…yum! This definitely set us up for the rest of the day and we walked onwards to YuYuan. Shanghai does have historic sites but many of them have been very modernly updated, it’s difficult to see past the sparkling gold exteriors and more plasticy looking brick work.

In amongst the streets here are hundreds of tourist shops selling typical Chinese craft and souvenirs along with famously long queues for the most well known dumpling restaurants and tees houses around. It seems to be the place for tourists to swarm towards and have their photographs taken. We did however find the less frequented YuYuan gardens, perhaps because you have to pay 30yuan to get in…? Who knows, but it really isn’t a place you should miss if you do visit Shanghai because it contains it’s original features, stone work and gardens, it does take you away from the crowded streets and manages to keep a sense of serenity about it.

On our way back we walked by People’s Square, which wasn’t very busy and then caught a quick tube back to East Nanjing rd, back at the hostel more pool was played, more defeats but not for Dave. We stepped out for some local cuisine, experience the troff style toilet and we packed ready to leave the following day.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)