Nola and Sandy were running late. Sandy's mum Norma had left her passport back in the hotel. "Take ya time mum!" yelled a breathless and grossly over weight Sandy as she heaved herself onto our Sydney International Airport shuttle bus. "....Plenty of time before our flight leaves".

This was the first trip to Europe for a group of four middle aged women from Roma in central northern Queensland and everyone was beside themselves with excitement - and in absolute chaos. And they had more luggage than what you would expect to be humanly possible. A sweaty Norma eventually stumbled back onto the bus, passport clutched tightly in her hand. "Close one Normy!" exclaimed a jubilant Sandy.

The bus driver looked weary and the other eight passengers silently snarled. Hopefully, everyone had quite as much time to spare before their flight as did the Roma Women.

The women's excitement and good humour however was in the end quite infectious. There was great hilarity while Nola in a rocket roaring gravel voice entertained the passengers, explaining that she was in fact an experienced traveller. She was a die hard Elvis fan and had even undertaken the pilgrimage to Gracelands. We all looked suitably impressed. It was hard not to share in the Roma Women's enthusiasm. In fact it was a very funny if rather late trip to the airport.

A tragic young woman sat on the floor at the China Eastern Airlines check in area surrounded by a huge pile of cosmetics emptied from her cabin luggage. Whether she had lost something or she realised she could not take aboard a container with more than 100 ml of liquid, we were not to know. She was so totally focussed on frantically ripping more and more goods from her bag she didn't even hear us offering assistance. We empathised with her acute anxiety. Airports are stressful places, especially on your own.

We don't need stress or indeed any reason at all to seek out a drink or two before we travel. The Qantas Lounge is a special refuge for us before we fly out from Sydney and one of the advantages of Business Class travel. It is just good to sit down and relax, and gather our thoughts before we board our flight to Shanghai.

Relaxing in the packed lounge we wondered just how much financial difficulty Australia was really suffering. According to our Government, Australia was (economically) "doing it hard". Well, on a glance of Sydney International Airport, it seemed to us that a lot of Australians were travelling - and travelling well.

Shanghai is the hub for China Eastern Airlines and makes for a very convenient base for our overseas travel. We always fly China Eastern and we always fly via Shanghai to our destinations. The airline services a vast array of international cities, is very cost competitive and we have found the service to be first class. Each time we fly with China Eastern, we are amazed how the airline continues to improve its services. We often smile about our memories of our first flight with them in 2004 when asking for a glass of champagne caused so much surprise and when we finally were served, it arrived warm in a small liqueur glass!

We were delighted to be travelling on an Airbus 330 that offered Business Class with flat bed seating for just 24 passengers, greatly adding to the comfort of our flight. A good sleep does make all the difference even for a day time flight. The food was fabulous. It was not at all difficult to enjoy meals such as pan fried lobster with truffled potatoes and lobster sauce, chicken in prosciutto or baby lamb chops in black bean sauce. And Alan's entree of prawns with jellyfish and seaweed in a Shaoshing soy marinade with fresh chilli was to die for!

A French woman sitting adjacent to us had holes in the soles of her shoes. For some reason, it reminded me of the Paul Simon song "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes". Why would you travel Business Class with such lousy shoes I wondered. Much to our surprise, her seat was often taken up by a young man also in shabby clothing - "but without the after shave to compensate for his ordinary shoes". As it turned out the woman was travelling on business and her husband was in Economy Class. It was amazing to us that China Eastern was so relaxed about her swapping with her husband. We remembered our working days when Alan travelled First Class with politicians and I accompanied him, but had to travel Economy Class. Sadly I had no success in swapping with him and was quite severely remonstrated when I did. In the end and much to the mirth of my fellow travellers, Alan had sneakingly supplied me with First Class morsels of food whenever he could.

The three dimensional flight map display on our individual television screens was for us, really interesting. We are always disappointed when the aircraft window shutters are closed on daylight flights, and apart from a flat screen map, we have little idea of where and what we are flying over. At least we had some idea of what the terrain looked like, and even what the simulated flight desk display resembled. The ten hour trip went quickly. It was smooth, comfortable and very pleasant.

Linear pin hole lights lit up a black Shanghai sky. Resembling an Aboriginal dot painting, the lights of the magnificent city on approach seemed to stretch forever. It is always fabulous to be back in Shanghai and although we have landed in Shanghai on numerous occasions, it is always exciting - and always for some reason very special.

China is certainly reducing red tape to encourage tourism and these days it is possible to stay for a maximum of 72 hours in Shanghai or Beijing without the need for a visa. Although we were delighted with this major breakthrough in Chinese bureaucracy and were assured by our travel agent and now long time friend David Hu of China Travel Service, Sydney that this was in fact the case, we were wary of what we would encounter at Shanghai airport without a visa. And I guess we had some reason to be a bit concerned after an alarming situation some years ago when, in transit, we were detained and interrogated for two hours (and nearly missing our flight to Sydney) by some 20 heavily armed guards for arriving in Shanghai without a valid visa. I still recall David saying "Oh Weeeendy, don't worry. You are only in transit. It will all be fine..." Well, it wasn't and after being tossed out and onto the main airport road by the guards, we had to go through the same procedure again. It was a miracle we were let through a second time.

Alan's discovery of Google Translate proved to be exceptionally helpful. Thanks to his Internet research we knew that our shuttle bus to the Shanghai Airlines Travel Hotel, Pudong was labelled SAT and left just outside the Pudong International Airport. But again and given past experience, we were taking all precautions with our directions. Not surprisingly, we could not find the bus pick up point anywhere. There were no officials to be seen and in the end Alan approached an elderly street sweeper and showed her his Google translation. Much to our surprise the friendly woman, on reading his crumpled paper translation, took him by the arm to the median strip in the road and yes, just where you would never believe was a bus stop point.

We never cease to be amazed at the helpfulness of the Chinese people. When Alan missed his step and lurched horizontally across the shuttle bus steps, the entire bus came to his aid, helping him with luggage and picking up his wallet and making sure that he was OK. It is a side of Chinese culture that we do not often hear about in the Australian media, yet we have found the people's sheer honesty and friendliness consistent throughout the country, from Shanghai in the east to the far outer frontier western province of Xinjiang. It is always good to be back in China.

Shanghai has changed so much since our first visit some ten years ago. As we wove through the airport precincts, I mused that you could be in any city in the world. Flash fast cars, super highways, illuminated billboard advertisements for designer goods and clothes and vast bright lights however belied an underbelly of urban Chinese living. And every now and then the truth would appear in the image of a grossly overladen bicycle, laboriously peddled by a thin shabbily coated man through a toxic, sulphurous dark night.

We did not need or want a glamorous hotel for the one short evening before we flew out to Rome and onto Sicily the following day. All we needed was a clean, comfortable room with close proximity to the Pudong International Airport. Although our agent David was concerned about our choice, the Shanghai Airlines Travel Hotel was totally adequate. It was no world beater but the Business Suite we booked was certainly comfortable and the breakfast was good. In fact, it was good to be in a mainstay hotel with ordinary Chinese people, rather than a foreigners' tourist hotel.