Friday June 30th I woke up at the crack of dawn, took a shower and packed my stuff. It is becoming something of a routine for me to pack my stuff and I've become way more efficient now, I can pack it all in 2 minutes. I went upstairs to eat breakfast before my bus at 7AM. I sat at a table alone reading my book. There was only another person in the cafe, a 50-something man that I hadn't seen before. I ordered banana pancakes and read while waiting for my order. At some point the man initiated the conversation [View Full Entry]

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Thursday June 28th The roosters woke me up again this morning but I'm getting used to it. I had a lot of things planned for the day so I was happy to be up by 5:30. I quickly dressed up and went directly to Echo Valley to see the Hanging Coffins. I took the right turn this time and went in the cemetary and asked an old man for the right trail and he showed me. Once you found the trail , you just have to follow it. The way down is a bit tricky after rain (it rained most [View Full Entry]

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Sunday June 25th I woke up very early on Sunday due to traffic in the road. I took a shower, packed my backpack, checked out and got into a taxi. I had originally planned to stay the day in Manila and take an overnight bus to Banaue at 22:00 but the thought of staying 15 more hours in Manila was too much for me so I was going to take the first bus that I could to the mountain which happened to be one of the hourly bus to Baguio, the summer capital of the Philippines. The taxi driver was friendly, [View Full Entry]

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Friday June 23rd I woke up relatively early in the morning and headed to the shower, which are outside the building on a sort of balcony. We then went outside to buy water as we were both really thirsty. It took a while to find a place open and on the way back we found a nice fruit stand. I bought an orange (2MOP, or 0.25$) and Richard bought bananas and mango from a cool little old lady who pointed at our bottle of water, then her cold drink refrigiratore and said: tomorrow tomorrow! Too bad I'm not staying in Macau [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday June 21th I woke up really early Wednesday on what me and Richard had agreed would be "museum day" (admission to museums is free on wednesday in Hong Kong) and decided to work on my previous blog at Cyber Clan before leaving. I bought some cheap cookies at 7/Eleven (a cornerstore that is ubiquitous in asian cities) and ate while typing. I didn't have enough time to finish so I went back to the dorm to do some laundry. At that point I realized I had a slight diarhea, not the explosive type but the "I-need-to-go-to-the-toilet-every-hour" type which was [View Full Entry]

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Sunday June 18th I woke up at around 11AM on Sunday after watching football with my dormmates until midnight the night before. I took a shower and went outside in an internet cafe called CyberClan where I wrote the previous blog entry. The cafe is really big and I was assigned a computer in a small remote corner right next to a girl that was chatting with guys on a webcam and that seemed really annoyed to have a neighboor. After that it was already 13:00 and I hadnt eaten yet so I was hungry so I went to a little [View Full Entry]

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I made my previous entry just a few hours before taking my plane to hong kong on Thursday June 15th in Vancouver. After writting my blog entry in downtown Vancouver I took the bus to the airport and within an hour and 3 bus transfers later I was in Vancouver International Airport. My flight was with Air Canada so I did the check-in/baggage check at their booth. I've heard so much bad things about Air Canada I almost feel bad not to join the chorus but I must say every time I flew with them they have been good. The employees [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday (June 13th) I woke up at 7:00AM after sleeping for 10 hours straight. I slept like a baby and felt much better in the morning. I went in the hostel cafe and ordered pancakes with fruits and went on my way to UBC for my first "interviews" for my graduate studies which I am planning to start after this trip. I'm fairly certain I will go to UBC because it is very strong in the field I want to work in (neurobiology of learning and memory, in other words: what happens in the brain when we learn something...) but [View Full Entry]

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This update is quite long because I am covering several days... I woke up at 8AM for the last time in my own bed on June 9th after a very short night since I went out with my friend Frank and got my blog running after so I ended up going to bed at 5AM. I immediately started packing, printing things that I needed, took care of "administrative" stuff that I hadn't done yet (why do something early when you can do it last minute?), depacked and repacked just to make sure I hadn't forgotten everything and generally just stressed about [View Full Entry]

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This is my first entry in this wonderful blog of mine which I will be updating a few times a week from now on. This will be my first long term backpacking trip and I am planning to cross the planet overland (I'll take flights only accross oceans) for 12 months or until money runs out. I like overland travel because it gives a better oportunity to go to places you wouldn't see if you just took the plane from capital to capital. My current itinerary is as follow: Canada 1 week, Hong Kong/Macau 1 week, Philippines 3 weeks, China 2 [View Full Entry]

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