Wednesday July 26th I took pictures of Lijiang's Old Town very early in the morning. I managed to find the square almost empty (except for enterprising taxi drivers trying to give me a ride) and got some interesting pictures of the Old Town without a density of people that would be more appropriate on Shinjuku Avenue. I had Muesli, yogurt and fruit breakfast at Well Bistro at 7:30 and made my way to the bus station by 8:30 and hopped on the minibus to Qiatou. It turns out the japanese woman/american man couple that was behind me on the bus to [View Full Entry]

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Monday July 24th As I said on the last blog I woke up at 9AM and immediately made my way out to get to Lijiang. Before taking care of the bus I had breakfast at Cafe de Jack which I really recommend. Good food, decent price and nice staff. It seems I hadn't learned from my previous mistake and didn't buy a ticket in advance thinking that since there were 20+ buses to Lijiang hopping on one wouldn't be any problem. I went to Michael's travel agency which had buses to Lijiang ticket advertised and asked for a ticket for today. [View Full Entry]

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Saturday July 22nd Needless to say I woke up late on Saturday. We were planning to put our stuff in the dutch's room as we were leaving on a sleeper bus at 22:00 so we had to checkout by 14:00 from our room (wierd checkout time). We woke up too late for breakfast at the hotel so I went to City Cafe to have a chocolate pancake that was delicious. I went back to the hotel and slowly packed. I wasn't too sure what I wanted to do for the day. The brits went to the pagodas the day before and [View Full Entry]

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Thursday July 20th I was feeling okay when I woke up so I packed everything and went directly to the bus station. I bought a ticket to Guilin for 15RMB which I knew is overpriced by 5 but I figured it's an express so it should be faster. Well it sure didn't feel like an express at around 50km/hr on the highway but hey, I guess someone somewhere made 5RMB more of profit. I arrived in Guilin an hour and a half later and I tried to figure out when the buses were leaving for Guyiang and Nanning. I was a [View Full Entry]

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Monday July 17th The first thing I remember when I woke up was that I was totally freaking out because I couldn't find my daypack (my camera was in there). I quickly realized that I probably forgot it at Susannah's where I had a bit too many beers. I quickly ran there and found my daypack which had been kept by the staff with nothing stolen. I was so relieved yet felt so stupid. I thanked everyone and left to go back to my dorm. I'll definately go back there just to encourage their honesty. I really need to be way [View Full Entry]

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Due to extremely bad weather in the first days of my trip to China I don't have pictures here. Don't worry they're coming in the next blog. Friday July 14th I was still in a bad mood from the day before. I woke up late and took time to prepare everything so by the time I was in the ticket office for the bus company that would take me to Guangzhou it was 10:00. I got a ticket for 11:30 at the other side of the border and I took a bus going to the border. I did all the border [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday July 12th My plane was leaving at 10:40 so I didn't have to wake up early. But I guess you get used to getting up early so by 7:30 I was up. I took my time to pack, chatted with the owner's daughter and bought a cool bracelet. She mentioned that she was jealous of us because we can travel. She'd like to travel but even if they work hard they can never get enough money to travel overseas. There's not much you can answer to that. I said goodbye and went in the street looking for a tricycle. I [View Full Entry]

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Sunday July 10th My plan was to catch the 7AM bus to Puerto Princesca. I hadn't thought of putting my alarm because I figured the roosters would wake me up way before that anyway. I guess I'm getting used to it because I woke up at the very late time of 6:45AM, so I had only 15 minutes to pack everything and run to the bus station on the other side of town. As usual when I'm last minute I'm scared to miss the bus but I should know by now that this is rarely a problem in the Philippines, even [View Full Entry]

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Thursday July 7th I woke up, took a swim in the ocean, took a shower and went to the cafe to see if there were enough people for the tour. When I got there I realized we were gonna be 8 on the tour: me, the 2 korean guys, a filipino couple and 2 danish girl and their mom. I had some french crepes filled with jam (this place is awesome for food). I went downstairs to get fins and mask but the fins were all too small so I had to take ones size 9 that I could barely enter [View Full Entry]

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Monday July 3rd For the first time since I've been in the Philippines I woke up really late on Monday. As usual I had made some crazy scheme for the following days. I was to take an overnight 11 hour bus at 17:00 to Lepaszi, arriving early Tuesday where I'd hike and take picture of Mt Mayon, the world's most picture-perfect volcano. I would take another overnight bus back to Manila on the evening coming back in the capital by Wednesday morning. Wednesday I'd do a day-trip to Lake Taal about 2 hours south of Manila to take pictures of that [View Full Entry]

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