............................................ You all may have noticed that the volume of blog entries in the past few days has dropped down to nil... Travelblog crashed and was down for a couple of days, and a lot of data has been lost on their part. So until I do some fixing, most, if not all of my previous blog entries will be inaccessible, and a lot of the pictures will have to be reloaded... Not good times. ............................................ In any case, we left Dubrovnik, and headed to the airport to pick up our rental car. Getting in and speeding out of the airport [View Full Entry]

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We got into Dubrovnik much later than expected, sweaty, and tired. We tried our hardest to stay up for a bit and check it out, but after an hour of light touring, we were exhausted and went back to our Villa to nap, which ended up being several hours. We also discovered that it was really hot in Dubrovnik, even at night. The next day, we toured the city en force, along with hordes of other tourists. In fact, the place was tourist central. Unlike Kotor, it didn't seem like there was a single non-tourist related business set up. There were [View Full Entry]

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I suppose that ridiculously late transportation was something that I needed to start getting used to in the Balkans. The train from Belgrade, to Bar in Montenegro pulled in nearly an hour late, and took almost another hour to get situated before it left. Luckily, we had two awesome Serbian girls sitting next to us which made the 11 hour trip a pretty good time, with a lot of laughs. We were so loud (and didn't even realize it), that the other people sharing a cabin, an elderly couple, got up with a sour look on their face and abandoned their [View Full Entry]

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The bus from Sofia to Belgrade took a lot longer than expected. The border alone took an hour because apparently, the border patrol on the Bulgarian and Serbian sides were too busy having coffee and cigarettes to immediately get to stamping our passports. When we made an unexpected stop in Nis to switch busses, I was lucky enough to meet a Macedonian girl who spoke English (no one else on the bus spoke that, German or Spanish, so I would have been really out of luck) and showed me where to switch in our tickets, where the new bus was, [View Full Entry]

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After another 24 hours in flights/layovers, (Beijing - Hong Kong - London - Sofia), I was back in Europe. I was missing Asia a bit, but looking forward to such creature comforts as toilet paper, Western-style toilets, babies wearing diapers, and no street-spitting. Bulgaria was a country I'd been really curious about, as I'd met a fair amount of Bulgarians in the past few years, and was curious to see what their country was like. After some problems with the ATMs, I was able to get some Leva out and was ready to start exploring. I was a bit disillusioned to [View Full Entry]

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[url='/Videos/4332.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/4332.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Up on the Great Wall We were pretty exhausted from Shanghai, and excitedly boarded the sleeper train for Beijing having heard that it was the nicest of the trains we would take. We were getting into Beijing at 9:30, so we'd be able to get a good nights sleep. Our hearts sunk when we found out that we'd be sharing the train car with a group of 40 Chinese 11 year olds, and only 4 teachers to watch over them. We could hear the noise level before we boarded the train. Sure enough, the [View Full Entry]

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[url='/Videos/4186.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/4186.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Shanghai Acrobats[url='/Videos/4188.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/4188.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] The Circle of Death I was pretty excited about visiting Shanghai. I remember having read some novels that took place in 1800's Shanghai which described the place as a crazy den of thieves, the Chinese version of the wild west, and that had captured my imagination. More recently, I'd heard it compared to New York, but in Chinese terms. We had yet another ro [View Full Entry]

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sadly, before the Travelblog crash, there was a great write-up of my experiences in Xian. I didn't have any backups of this one, so it is as of now, gone for good. I don't think a re-write so long after the fact would do my experience justice, but luckily, the video and comments were left unharmed. I've reposted some pics. Enjoy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Full Entry]

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[url='/Videos/4129.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/4129.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Rising water in the Yangtze's Boat Locks[url='/Videos/4130.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/4130.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Dancers on the Yangtze River After another 14 hour sojourn across the Chinese countryside, we pulled into the city of Yichang, on the Yangtze river. We dropped most of our stuff off at a hotel, as we'd be hopping around the river for the next few days with different accomodations each night. Following a great lunch which we were told [View Full Entry]

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Heading out from Hong Kong, we took a short train to Shenzen which is Hong Kong's nearest border to the Chinese mainland, and went through visa and passport control. We were finally in mainland China! It was actually a bit underwhelming, as everything seemed to be the same except that there was no English writing anywhere to be seen. We boarded the first of many overnight trains we would be taking and were introduced to the beauty that is Chinese train travel. The trains from place to place range in quality, and this particular train was on the higher end [View Full Entry]

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