Blogs from China, Asia - page 2232

Hello residents of blog-land: First off...Happy Mother's day 2006 to all the mother's out there! No offense to all the mother's reading this, but my mom is the world's best. (And since I'm on the other side of the world, I can definitely say that with some authenticity). So....as I sit here at my computer on a beautiful Sunday day...I'm starting to reminisce about my time here in Beijing, and I offer you this anecdote for the day of how far I've come in four months. I was sitting in the park next to my apartment, finishing up a John Grisham book I have been engrossed in. Out of the corner of my eye I see an old Chinese man very very slowly hobbling along. Sure enough he sits down next to me on the bench. ... read more

Very tired tonight! Batteries at a serious low ebb so gonna blog as fast as I can and then bugger off to bed. On our last night in Xian we went out for a night at a spot that does an all you can eat hotpot buffet dinner. For hotpot don't read that thing that Betty Turpin makes on Coronation street, this is sort of a steaming hot barrel of water on your table which you then add you choice of ingredients to, which included on the buffet bar a container of LIVE EALS! Yup, just pick them up, drop them in the boiling water and they're ready to eat in no time. I decided that was one experience I could live without, but Colin and Chris opted for it and reported they were ok, but ... read more

First Stop: Dawu After a day-long car ride, I reached Dawu, the capital city of Golok, within the Tibetan province of Amdo. My travel companions, of course, spoke no English and so our communications were tempered with puzzled expressions and much laughter. Fortunately, smiles are universal. One thing that seems to go well when there is little else one can say is to tell people “Ari ked” (English) equivalents for various things. This always gets a big laugh - especially a three-syllable word like "afternoon" or "Stephannie." In Dawu I met up with Holly, an American woman who has been living here for six months studying Amdo dialect and doing research for her PhD. We hit it off instantly, and have spent the last three days together, traveling and exploring. It’s great to have a friend ... read more

12/05/06 Left the senior French group(very nice people)in Kunming, they carried on their trip up north and I made my way down here to YinYuan in YuanJiang district right at the border of HongHe prepecture. A nice lttle town at the altitude about 1500m which surrounded by many small villages. YinYuan is a Bai region but they claimed they didn't wear the same costume as the Bai in Dali, and in fact they didn't wear any costume anymore. YinYuan was a prosperous market town in the old day on the tea trading route from east to west, you can still see some old houses with beautiful lintel, roof tile and woodcraft. Local said there used to be a city wall surrounded the village, and many temples within the area for different believer , but now there ... read more

10th May Laura - Got the train to Datong. It was a hard seat, and when they say hard they really do mean HARD!!! It was more or less a bench with a high back, which me and Paul shared with some guy who kept clearing his throat every 10 seconds. Fortunately he got off half way through the journey (which was 6 hours long). The people sitting opposite us were apparently allergic to fresh air and when we opened the window the woman sitting next to it cowered away and looked like she was going to cry. So we had to spend most of the journey in 100 degree heat (I exaggerate, but only slightly) and breathing in stuffy, sweaty air. Needless to say when we finally arrived we both had headaches and I felt ... read more