It took a long flight on no sleep to finally arrive at my destination. Sick as a dog i step off the plane at 6am to the humid haze of the wonderfully smoggy city of Beijing. I made my way to my hostel where i was to meet up with Jeff and Krista. Both of which are still asleep and i figured i had to keep myself up all day to get on to the right time. It wasn't going to be easy with no sleep on the plane and not a single red bull in sight! When the two woke [View Full Entry]

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Ni Hao from the Yangtze River. After Tai Chi classes at 6:00am, we watched the sunrise over the first of the major gorges. It was stunning. Misty fog around the mountains and the quiet morning made the scene seem surreal. Then we boarded small boats to cruise down some of the tributary rivers. Our river guide sang us folk songs and told us about life before the dam was built. It was the bitter sweet taste of progress as he described life before and after the dam. We have one more night on the cruise before we arrive at the Three [View Full Entry]

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After watching Bizzarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern so many times I knew there was a great street market where you can have some extremely weird eats. So we searched it out and made our way down there to see what delicasies we could find. The market was really neat. It's a row of small tents with red lanterns about a block long and they serve everything from noodles and dumplings to scorpion and sea horse. Naturally we wanted to try the weird and bizzarre foods so why not start with scorpion. It's fried up pretty good and covered with salt so [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday, Thursday, we went to the Great Wall. I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit disappointed to go to Badaling again... and the trip there - the jade emporium, the horrible lunch, and the asian-sized benches and melting ice cream - wasn't so great. But then we arrived! And, really, for a few hours, Badaling is as good as any. Since we went during the week, it wasn't very crowded, and since we were there in the late afternoon, most busses had already left.... My 3rd time to the Wall. Shanhaiguan with Syd and Brent in Jan '07, Badaling with [View Full Entry]

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So far so good...We have wondered the city a bit. We have taken in the sights of the Summer Palace and the amazing food at out favorite restaurant that i have eaten at 3 of of the 4 days i have been here. But we decided it was time to push our limits and really test our courage. We ventured down to the main drag where there are endless street vendors pushing food and drink onto everybody that passes. Since we are obviously tourist they shout "Hello!" to get our attention but as soon as you try to ask what the [View Full Entry]

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The Bottle Women of Beijing You can't help but notice these people around because if you are anywhere near your last drop of water in a bottle they suddenly appear out of no where and take the bottle from you. It works well for both parties...you don't have to haul it around until you find a bin and they can get a small fee at a recycling center for it and sustain themselves that littler bit easier! And if you are thinking that they only bring the bottles home to refill with water and sell on tomorrow, they don't as when [View Full Entry]

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Have been in Beijing for 1 week and it is phenomenally hot. At one point it hit 38degrees, but luckily that was not the day when the humidity was 90%. Kind of feel permanently grimey! This has however not marred any experiences of the city. Anyway, onto the city itself. An ecclectic mix of ancient culture and 21st century chic. very different to any other city I have visited before, possibly because it is so big and so busy. There is so much to do, that I'm glad I had 7 days here, with a much needed couple of days completely [View Full Entry]

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I believe I left you on the day I had arrived in Guangzhou. I think it was the day when i went for dinner with the chinese guy i met in my dorm. He was ethnicly chinese but spent most of his life in australia. This was good because he could speak English and Chinese very well. At midnight he took me to a sea food market because the fresh batch comes in at midnight and so we walked around a found some shrimps which we purchased and then took to a nearby restaurant for them to cook for us. The [View Full Entry]

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I am back in Guilin (I was here briefly before setting off to the Rice Terraces to apply for my visa extension) to collect my passport from the Public Security Bureau (PSB). It takes a week to process, which gives me ample time to explore the city and relax a bit after almost two weeks of hiking and being on the move constantly. This visa thing is actually quite funny: When I applied for my Chinese visa in Mongolia, they asked for all kinds of documents, including an exit ticket out of China and bank statements showing that I have enough [View Full Entry]

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MORE PICTURES FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE! THIS SECTION INCLUDES STILL MORE EATING! SEEMS WE DO THAT A LOT. TONIGHT WE WERE HONORING CSV AND THE SPECIAL PEOPLE IN CHINA THAT HAVE HELPED! IT ALSO INCLUDES A MEAL FROM THE NEXT DAY, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHICH MEAL! [View Full Entry]

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