dpelfrey
Don Pelfrey Joined: August 15th 2008
Logged in: June 13th 2011
Logged in: June 13th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Guangzhou
Guangdong Travels This entry is broken into several different trips over a few months. The reason being that the trips were short, little excursions which don’t deserve their own entry! All of the locations are located within Guangdong Province - the same province that Shenzhen is located within. First stop........the capital of Guangdong......Guangzhou. Guangzhou I had been to Guangzhou once before...to see Jackie Chan(see previous, awesome post). This time I went with my friend Linda to see some sights. Guangzhou is a bigger city than Shenzhen - which is hard to believe! Not only bigger in area, but also population. Guangzhou also has a long and rich history, unlike young Shenzhen. Guangzhou is also known as Canton - which may be more familiar to Americans. I visited this time only one day after my... read more
Lugu Lake
LuGu Lake Not actually the final stop in my grand tour of Yunnan Province, but the last entry for this trip. This was the only area that I did not travel with the boys. Only Linda and I traveled to this area. Due to time and travel constraints, we could only stay one night here - Chinese New Year no less. Looking at a map of Yunnan province, it looks as though you can travel directly from Shangri-La to Lugu Lake pretty easily. However, the map does not show the giant mountains in between the two places! So....we had to travel from Shangri-La back to Lijiang, spend the night and then get a bus returning north on the other side of the mountains. As I said before, I took a lot of buses on this trip! ... read more
Dali
Dali The city we almost skipped. Originally we had not planned to go to Dali. However, after our long ass bus ride from Kunming to Lijiang we decided to cut our trip in half and make an overnight stop in Dali. This was a good choice. In fact, I added Dali to the itinerary of my return trip with Linda. Again, like many of the other cities visited, there is an old town and new city. We stayed exclusively around the old town. We stayed in a great hostel called the Jade Emu. It felt more like a hotel and the Australian owner and his Chinese wife were very friendly. I highly recommend this place....if you're in the neighborhood! When we arrived, three of us(Don, David, Ian) went to venture out. Our fourth, Bill, decided to ... read more
Shangri-La
Shangri-La Well, this one should be short. Our next stop in Yunnan after the gorge was the famous city of Shangri-La, formerly known as Zhongdian. The Chinese renamed the city years ago to draw in tourists. Supposedly this is the city/area mentioned in the book, Lost Horizon by James Hilton.....although he never actually visited the place! After visiting the city - twice - I decided it’s not all that. I will say however, that I did visit during the “off season”. Many places were closed up for the winter......so maybe one day I will give it a chance during the summer. Shangri-La was very cold during our visit! I saw snow and ice for the first time in about a year! In fact, it was so cold I had to go to a local ... read more
Tiger Leaping Gorge
Tiger Leaping Gorge The main reason we chose to travel to Yunnan was to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge. This was something we were going to do way back in October. However, due to visa uncertainty, we bailed - and went to Thailand instead. Not a bad backup, but we still wanted to see the gorge. So we decided to travel throughout Yunnan Province for Chinese New Year, with the gorge as the focal point. As previously mentioned, one of the members of our group decided to bail on us at the very last second.....literally as we were walking out the door. No problem....because we picked up a friend! David, Ian and myself left Lijiang by bus to the small town of Qiaotou. This is one of the starting points for the hike. During the 4-5 ... read more
Lijiang
Wow...it's been forever since my last post. This is clearly not my fault. I left for my month long vacation in early January and I am posting now! A combination of things has prevented me from posting earlier. A hospital stay.......poor internet.......iPhoto issues.....laziness and this blog site being down. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something! Anyway....here is the first post of my vacation in the province of Yunnan.....way back in January! I combined the photos and blog into cities....because I traveled to the same cities more than once. The first part of my trip I traveled with 3 other teachers from the program....David - who I went to Thailand with, Ian, and Bill. Bill is an older gentleman in the program. He certainly reaffirmed my dislike for old people during this trek. We traveled ... read more
Christmas in Shenzhen!
CTLC Christmas Party For Christmas this year we got one day off - Christmas day. On Wednesday the Shenzhen Education Bureau held a party for all the teachers in the program and put us in a hotel for the night. The night began with a traditional Chinese dinner at the round tables...which was not very good. We had eaten here before at our contract signing and it was about the same. The only good thing was all the wine they had available.....although it kinda tasted like ass. We were also entertained. My contact teacher Lu and his daughter were a main part of the festivities. Lu's daughter played the violin and she was outstanding. She is only 11 and is already at one of the highest grades of performers! While she was playing, Lu was drawing ... read more
Fairylake
Fairylake Botanical Garden My friend Linda(Xiaoran) asked me if I would like to go on a hike up a mountain - this is clearly the national sport of China, as I am asked this all the time! I of course said yes....always looking for new things to do! Linda said she would meet me at my school and bring her friend Jessie. I did not know if Jessie was a boy or girl...she's a girl. The two arrived at my school and we hopped on the bus. We then got off at some random stop and had to take a taxi to some weird bus station - I could never get back to this place the same way! We had to purchase actual bus tickets for a short 20 minute ride up part of this mountain ... read more
Dong Xi Chong
Dong Xi Chong - Longgang District Sooooooo....one of my Chinese friends(Xiaoxiong) asked me if I would like to go on a beach hike in Longgang(one of the non SEZ districts of Shenzhen). I agreed, hoping to get some good exercise and maybe meet some new Chinese friends. The night before, Xiaoxiong texted me telling me all the things I would need to bring on the hike - food, hiking boots, hat, jacket, sunscreen, etc........she then finished by asking me if I had insurance. I of course thought this was a big joke.......wrong! She was dead serious. Why would I need insurance for a beach hike.....how hard could it be? First, Xiaoxiong and I were to meet our hiking group at Shenzhen Stadium and then take a small bus about an hour to Dong Xi Chong beach. ... read more
Opening Ceremonies
Guangdong International Tourism and Culture Festival I recently had the opportunity to go to the city of Guangzhou. Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong Province - and is bigger than Shenzhen....hard to imagine! Our program was invited as a guest of the Shenzhen tourism..something, something. Those of us who chose to go, went for free(about2 1/2hour bus), ate for free, and got free tickets to the opening ceremony of the Guangdong International Tourism and Culture Festival. This was quite a spectacle. Not the opening of the Beijing Olympics by any means, but entertaining nonetheless! There were many little "plays" or presentations with a peppering of Chinese pop stars(I assume, since the crowd became excited when they performed!). But the main attraction of the evening was a one song appearance of Jackie Chan!!! Yes! The Great Jackie ... read more
