We arrived in Norway by riding the Swedish train all the way to the end of the line in Narvik, Norway. We spent the next 10 days working our way south before saying goodbye to Jen's brother Chris in Oslo. Highlights: - Our first snowfall of the trip as we hiked up the ski hill above Narvik with views of the fjord surrounded by snow-capped mountains - The Lofoten islands....we headed for the end of the lines...as far as the train, ferry and bus would take us, to the tiny fishing village of Å. The plan was to camp out for [View Full Entry]

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Oooops - we found this blog in the archive, and realised that it hadn't been uploaded....so here it is, only a few months out of date. As many of you know, we are now (March 2008) safely home, settled in a new apartment and have decided to finish our blog, starting with this one! More to come soon....and now back to the middle of October in Scandanavia We only spent a few days in Sweden....we had decided to make it a short visit so that we could have time to head further north into Norway. Jen's brother Chris is travelling with [View Full Entry]

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Andrew's Highlights of Finland: Getting our first piece of real bread in three months on the Finnair flight from Beijing - it's surprising how good it was after three months of rice and noodles Seeing Chris (Jen's brother) and having a partner in crime for a little while Crashing in a great pad...we stayed right downtown in Helsinki at the apartment of a friend of Jen's family...it was perfect (and left us a lot more money for beer)...thanks Eric! The girls here are really, really ugly. And fat. (I'm happily married, but I'm not blind) Reindeer sausage with lingonberry sauce....Rudolph is [View Full Entry]

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Since Andrew gave a good overview of China, I´ll write a quick recap of the places we visited along the way: Our GAP tour started in Shanghai, where we met our tour leader, Tina, and our group. We were very fortunate to have a small group, with another Canadian couple (Lesley & Paul from Guelph ) and a Brit (Lloyd from Manchester) joining us for the 2 weeks. Our hotel was close to Nanjing Road, a bustling shopping street, and the Bund, a riverside area that was once the British section of Shanghai and is lined with old colonial buildings. The [View Full Entry]

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Written by Andrew Jen and I were looking forward to our time in China, and not knowing exactly what we would be getting ourselves into. We were on a 14 day group tour with Jen's parents that covered a lot of ground. The tour was a wedding present from Jen's folks and a great excuse for them to see the world with us. We weren't too sure about how we would like being on a group tour, but it was a welcome relief from organizing...after being on the road for almost eight months, spending a couple of weeks on a guided [View Full Entry]

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We spent a week in Hong Kong before our 2 week "Highlights of China" tour. My (Jen's) cousin Mike and his girlfriend Nancy very generously put us up for the week in their very tiny HK apartment (which they share with a roommate, Andrew). Last year, Mike and Nancy lived just across the boarder, in Shenzhen, China, where they taught English. In September, they moved to HK to teach for one more year before going back to Ontario. We had a fantastic time hanging out with them, got very little sleep, and couldn't believe how fast the week flew by! Half [View Full Entry]

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By Jen: Our visit to Japan was only a week long, and we spent it in Tokyo, with an overnight trip to the mountains in Nikko. Our week in Tokyo was made all the better by our friend Scott (Scott and Andrew played together on the same ultimate team in Ottawa a couple of years ago) who sent us a fantastic email with "Scott's Top 10 Things To See & Do Around Tokyo". Scott has previously lived in Tokyo, and his advise was invaluable - thank you Scott! (We had met up with Scott while we were in Sydney, where he [View Full Entry]

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Andrew here...Welcome to our new blog format...the photo journal. As we haven't been making enough time to get our long winded blogs entries published, we're going to let the pictures tell the story....I don't want to be writing these entries when I'm back home!We spent close to three weeks in Thailand, with a couple breaks in between when we visited Cambodia and Laos. We spent a little too much of that time in Bangkok, but it paid off in having a great time while we were there. We also visited the northern area by going to the very touristy town of [View Full Entry]

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Laos as recalled by Jen: Having enjoyed our overnight train in India, we decided to try an overnight Thai train (1st class of course!). We took the train from Bangkok to the Thai border town of Nong Khai. As we didn't disembark until about 10 in the morning, it was really nice to enjoy waking up on the train and relaxing in our cabin (as opposed to the 3:30 am wake-up call in India!). I was especially looking forward to what would be our last truly exotic, less mainstream/touristy travel destination. The Laos border was only recently opened to tourists, and [View Full Entry]

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Hello again - Andrew here this time Cambodia...all I knew going into the country was that it had an awesome archeological site (angkor wat), that it had an abundance of landmines and had hosted an oppresive government regime. To be quite honest, I really don't know much more than that now. We were in the country for just over a week, and while I have a better appreciation of the country, I don't feel like I ever felt the real pulse of the nation. This trip was very much a tourist experience...we never really got off the beaten path, and I [View Full Entry]

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