Body surfing in Mexico? No, I had totally forgotten about that until you mentioned it! I thought my first time was in Hawaii and I remember that. But we did go in the ocean when we went to Hermosillo, didn't we?
This is my favorite video so far. The water has that aqua color and it looks like the boys are having so much fun! Did the filmer get knocked down by the wave while filming? Tesh, remember when you body surfed for the first time in Mexico?
Nanjing is my birth place Great blog on Nanjing, my birth place.
I totally agree with you on Nanjing being a noisy place. When I was there growing up,
I heard a lot of quarrels if literally translated will shame the most shameless people on earth.
It amounts to a word painting of people's private parts and such. Yack, it's really horrendous and obnoctious.
Xuanwu Lake is a nice place to visit. It's a tradition for us growing up in Nanjing to visit Xuanwu lake once a year.One of my lastin memory is an organized event
to swim across the lake in memory of the late Chairman Mao.
About the people approaching you wanting to learn English. I am kind of surprised. When I was in China, I would talk with a foreigner if I felt that they could have some time to kill, such as in a train. I lived in an era when I witnessed the first arrival of foreigners during the cultural revolution. I remembered the primary school I was attending was selected as a few of the schools that were open to foreign visitors. Being a naughty boy as I was, I was locked up once with other boys in a separate classroom so we wouldn't misbehave in front of the foreign visitors to embarrass my school. Actually my school is next to the Confucius Temple you visited.
About bargaining, I think you should do it and it will not offend anyone. Otherwise you will be paying too much. But I don't think you can haggle on the
price of food.
Thanks for your detailed travel blog on Nanjing.
Rich Hutong I live in beijing.
Some of the hutong homes have nice rooms and beautiful, live in there like live in houses:), but some of them are really bad, small space and with 3 generations live together. The point is all this old hutong house are located in downtown, unlike big US cities such as NYC, in beijing, the more closer to downtown, the more expensive the land. Original beijingers living there are all waiting the goverment to rebuilt hutong: not rebuilt the way like what you see, but build high commercial buildings, so they could get a lot of compensation, that's really alot of money. PS,most of hutong living people have several other apartment in beijing.
Rich Hutongs? Really? Do you live in Beijing? So inside the outer walls the homes are well taken care of and beautiful? We didn't get a chance to tour any actual homes in the hutongs, just peered through outer doorways.
About the Hutong I noticed that you wondered how could they afford owning a car while living in these old hutong. Actually, these buildings are worth alot of money in beijing, as I know, one middle sized siheyuan ( coutreyard?) worth more than 30,000,000RMB, that's almost 5,000,000 us dollars. People live there are rich .
Pictures of backpack coming Pancha - I took pictures of the backpack as soon as Jesse got home the night I read your comment - but now with my computer probs I'm having I can't post them for you to see... So sorry! ARGH.
China Climate 600 pictures?! wow. Unreal. I think you beat me :) The climate here is supposedly alot like the US - although the country is so very very big it varies alot. Where we are it's a bit hotter than the US, obviously, and more humid. But it gets cold in the winter and they have snow. Last year they had a 50-year snow storm; the skies dumped 5 feet and it about paralyzed the area. It was right over the Chinese new year in February, and folks who only got to go home once a year weren't able to. They were sleeping in train stations, stuck, with no heat. It sounds awful. And then they had an earthquake!
Made faces at my feet too They made faces at my feet too! And I've always thot my feet were cute :) But they needed clipping according to the pedicure folks.
I am a born wanderer and love to travel both near and far. I write for a living, so it only makes sense that I write when I travel. Here are the stories of the places I go.... full info
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So Fun!
I lOVE this video, especially the last shot of Tesha in her snorkling goggles!