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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As the world changes so changes XinYang - yet so much remains the same. "Urban renewal" is everywhere. So many buildings have been torn down, and rightly so, but so much remians the same; and are the new buildings really any better? Wednesday, Ms. Ruan, one of the teachers where we are teaching, took us the back way to our hotel. She took us past a large shopping center. The moment Megan and I saw it we both recognized it - Xia Market! We one rode in cabs from Xinyang Technical College to shop at Xia Market. Our students were so [View Full Entry]

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June 20 Having finally and emotionally finished our teaching (there were many tears, mostly the kids however) we started our freedom by making the possibly risky trip to Chengdu, home of the Giant Panda. Chengdu is in the Sichuan province that was hit by an earthquake on the 12th May. However, after much research into where the earthquake had hit we decided that it was still worth a trip. The Sichuan province is the 5th largest in China and is slightly larger than Germany and about twice the size of UK. Not only did we need to make sure that we [View Full Entry]

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Note to reader, this post is extremely long as I have not written in a while. I left you in Nha Trang the day before I went diving. The diving was fun, nothing out of the ordinary, some of the cast of "Finding Nemo" things of that nature.The only glitch I had there was that apparently I have the most sensitive fingers in the world because I managed to blister three of my knuckles pulling my wet suit on and off, and on again (the guys on the boat insisted I was wearing it back to front cause the zipper was [View Full Entry]

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July 17， 2008 We went shopping this evening. Again things change, so many upscale and rather upscale stores. We did a lot of looking - not much buying! Tomorrow evening Mr. Wan is going to try to make an appointment for us at the blind man massage hospital. He told us when we ask about massages in China we should be sure we ask for a blind man massage. He said massage has a bad name in China - that is massage are often not the type we think of, brings back memories of phone calls to our hotel in Beijing [View Full Entry]

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