With an eerie similarity to our first night in China, we hopped in a taxi cab at the Bangalore Airport with a driver who quickly got lost, was illiterate, and liked to park the car (unlocked) in sketchy areas at 1:30 am and ask random people who by all rights ought to be in bed, for directions. Of course, none of these people were able to help. All the phone numbers we had for the cottage we had booked were not being picked up. Muddling through Internet directions in a strange town we didn't know in the middle of the night, [View Full Entry]

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Combining the quirkyness of China with the conveniences of Malaysia, Bangkok is a really fun city. The food is amazing, everything is cheap and the city vibrates with energy...and not just from the protests occurring outside the British Embassy at the time. Our favourite part was a bicycle tour that took us through the twists and turns of black alleys in China Town, narrow enough for only one bicycle at a time. We went through markets, school yards, and past temples galore. Around any corner you might see one of the many monks is orange robes doing any number of things, [View Full Entry]

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We collected our packs at the Bangkok Airport and found them soaking wet from being transported from the plane to the terminal. Its rainy season in Bangkok and it turns out that our cheap knock-off packs from China are less than waterproof. We made our way to the bus which would take us downtown with street directions which didn't yet make sense to us, just knowing that we would see a 7-Eleven by a skytrain station as a reference point. We sat beside a nice man from Japan on the bus. He had actually sat next to us on the airplane, [View Full Entry]

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We have been trying to make the effort to go out and discover our new surroundings. The first few weeks this really entails where can you buy this, get that, take care of whatever bill. But now we are more concerned with what there is to do in KL. Here is an overview of some of our recent adventures. Pulau Ketam - Crab Island At the end of the KTM line (which is directly behind our apartment) is Port Klang. Here you board a strange half-submerged old rusty ferry and travel to Pulau Ketam for a leisurely day. Its a Chinese [View Full Entry]

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Moving to Subang Jaya has been a much easier transition for us than last year's move to China for many reasons. The most obvious is that most people here speak English. Still, I can't help but acknowledge that living in China makes foreign transitions easier everywhere else. In China you learn to be patient, you learn that you are unlikely to get what you really want, so you learn to appreciate whatever it is you do get, or get served. I remember how difficult it was initially to order food. We didn't know what dishes we liked, we didn't speak or [View Full Entry]

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The Chinese customs officer is reviewing my exit information carefully. I fidget hoping he won't notice my answer to question #12, the last question, but when he gets to it he goes rigid and slowly looks up at me, staring me directly in the eyes. "It says here you have not hiked any section of the Great Wall of China. Is this true?" he asks. "Well I intended to" I assure him, "friends and family had said they were going to visit, so we kept postponing the moment to share with others...but ...but... nobody came over and we ran out of [View Full Entry]

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Our plane landed at midnight in the city of Zhangjiajie and the local taxicabs had us by the throat. They were a collective mass, no bargaining, they wouldn't compete, it was going to be 300 rmb to the hotel and they knew we had no choice in the matter. We tried to haggle it down to even 200, but they wouldn't budge. Reluctantly we tossed our packs in the trunk and got into the taxi. It would cost us half the price to return to this airport 3 days later. Zhangjiajie is seriously on the map for Asian tourists, but rather [View Full Entry]

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*** Disclaimer *** Craig and I only did about 10 things in Xi'an, so there are probably other things to do that belong on our list, but we didn't experience them. Our hostel lined us up with a one day trip to the Terra Cotta Army with an English guide, but most of the sites we were easily able to figure out on our own. 10. The Terra-Cotta Warrior Factory We didn't sign-up for this one, our guide just dropped us off. I guess it is kind of interesting to see how they make the replicas but then your tour guide [View Full Entry]

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Since our last blog we have had two weekend trips to Beijing, which we have spent exploring smaller venues in city. Now that we have decided to move to Kuala Lumpur for 2008-2009, the pressure is on to devour as much culture as we can. For Craig and I that tends to mean doing lots of little things rather than the big ones. Lama Temple - Yong Hu Gong On a Saturday morning we made our way up to Yong Hu Gong (built 1694). This is a very pleasant temple to explore, but most impressively, it boasts an 18 meter solid [View Full Entry]

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While Kunming seems to have done quite a good job of tearing down its old buildings and recreating itself as any other modern Chinese city, it still offered a few tidbits of fun for Craig and I as we began and ended our trip in this ancient city. Our hostel was located downtown, very near Green Lake, which is a large water park with walkways and pavillions. It's a fantastic place to wander in the evenings as every space is filled with performers practicing Peking Opera or other traditional music. Dancers fill the square with their choreographed moves to traditional music [View Full Entry]

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