Fish and other water dwellers

Eliot has become very interested in fish recently. This is probably because in true Chinese fashion, every building seems to have an acquarium, every pond contains fish, practically every puddle has fish in it. The Shanghai acquarium has a rather good reputation so we set off to the 'dark side' of Shanghai - the newly developed area across the river - to investigate.

It really was quite impressive. Rays, otters, penguins and tonnes of fish but the highlight was the shark tunnel through which a conveyor belt made a stately progression. Eliot was fascinated by the sharks, almost as much as by the scuba divers swimming around, warped by the shape of the tunnel to seem like children. The Chinese, however, were mostly more interested in the two foreign children in their midst. "Look, there are two of them. Look how fat the little one is. Why isn't he wearing socks?" the by now familiar litany commenced. Jamie decided it was time to act. "Watch the fish, not the foreigners". Everyone laughed. Snubbed, the lady turned her attention to the fish. "I've eaten that one" she said to her grandaughter. "Oh, and that one too. At least I think I have. I've definitely eaten that one" she pointed excitedly. We jumped off the conveyor belt and left her to eye up the fish hungrily.

A friend of ours who lives nearby recently acquired an acquatic friend. His house has an enclosed courtyard at the back complete, of course, with fish pond. There is no access other than through the house or over a very high wall. On coming home from work one day, he went into the courtyard to find a rather large turtle sunning itself. He went to fetch his ayi who nearly fainted when she saw it. The mystery was how it found its way to the house. Juli, a turtle owner and mutual friend, was suspect number 1 despite swearing that she'd had nothing to do with it. Eventually, the mystery was potentially cleared up when an article appeared in the local newspaper detailing the theft of some turtles from the zoo. "Turtles are very easy to steal" the zookeeper was quoted as saying. "They fit easily into pockets and are unable to practice self defence". Our theory was that the thief was under pressure and lobbed the turtle into our friend's garden.

We spent a slightly surreal evening on Saturday on board a Royal Navy frigate in town to "promote UK plc". All well and good save that the only people invited to the reception were from the UK. Perfectly sane men regressed to childhood as they oohed and aahed at the helicopter on board and the guns. The Chinese stayed home.

Thailand 10 - China 0

The coup in Thailand may have been frowned upon by the international media but the Heywoods in Shanghai were delighted. Not for political reasons you understand, but because we had been desperately trying and failing to book tickets out of Shanghai for the October public holiday.

Our initial plan had been to go and stay with a childhood friend of Jamie's who has a house on Lantau in Hong Kong but his generous offer of hospitality had obviously not been cleared with his wife who was expecting not only a baby but her mother the weekend we had planned to visit and the offer was withdrawn a couple of days after we had booked our tickets.

I had sat in the travel agent for several hours trying to find an alternative. Strangely, the agents are very keen to make sure you pay a good price for your ticket. "What about Vietnam?" "Fully booked" "How about Thailand?" "Fully Booked". "How do you know it's fully booked?" "Fully booked, waiting list only." "Can you check?" "Yes, fully booked waiting list only." "What, every day during the week long holiday?" "Maybe not on October 1st." "OK then, October 1st is fine." "No, not fine, ticket too expensive!" "How much is it?" "Too expensive."

I had given up and we had resigned ourselves to an uneventful not to mention dull week in China when those thoughtful generals decided to stage a coup. We called the travel agent again and a couple of days later, had tickets to Phuket.

We found everything about Thailand charming. Somehow, when we first arrived in Bangkok, we were surprised that everyone raved about how nice the Thais were. It wasn't that they weren't nice, they were but it didn't really seem to impact on us. Coming from China, however, the continual smiling, the gracious gestures, the politeness, the soft tones of the language, were so striking that within minutes, we had acquired that slightly befuddled, gormless grin that tourists in Thailand so often sport.

We had four fantastic days in a hotel which we would have poured scorn on pre-kids but which managed to be both child friendly and tasteful - open aired and lush with tropical greenery. The food was great, the weather was mixed but we didn't care.

We landed back in Pudong airport and were greeted by the unsmiling customs officials (OK, I know they are not the best representatives of a people) but I quailed. As we cleared customs, two girls in blue uniforms intoned "Welcome to maglev. Welcome to maglev. Welcome to maglev" - maglev being the super high speed train which goes from the airport to nowhere in particular.

As I said to Jamie, we will look back on our time in Thailand with sighs of nostalgia and on our time in China, with wry smiles.