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Todd
Well I'm off on another adventure and am planning on documenting all the action, crazy stories and other interesting parts of the trip through this blog again! This time Southeast Asia is calling and I'm planning to travel by myself for six weeks through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China. Comments and messages are more than welcome! Thanks for reading fastlane
Travel Blog Posts
August 19th 2012
My last stop on my 7 week journey brought me to Dalian, a beautiful port city in the northeast of China about an hour flight from Beijing. I had originally planned to meet my Chinese friend Junting here in her hometown, but as I mentioned in my other post, she is still stuck in the United States working out her visa issues. Despite this, Junting went above and beyond to see that I had a great stay in Dalian after I told her I still wanted to visit. She put me up with her really nice and funny parents at her gorgeous home, made sure her English speaking cousins and friends would be around so I could communicate (her parents don't speak any English) and planned for great sightseeing adventures and dining experiences that I enjoyed ... read more
August 16th 2012
There is a Chinese saying that goes "he who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man". Well, those are quite challenging words, so I set out with my new Beijing friends to prove ourselves. On the top of the list of the New Seven Wonders of the world, the great wall is probably the top tourist attraction in China. And the crowds proved it. I had been warned that the crowds are nuts, but you never really understand until you experience it firsthand. We first had to get to the wall which consisted of taking a public bus that operates just to take tourists (mostly Chinese tourists because I am not sure a non Chinese speaker would be able to navigate the system too easily) straight to the Great Wall at Badaling. ... read more
August 15th 2012
I was greatly looking forward to finally making it to Beijing, the capital of China. This was because I would be meeting up with a couple friends of my friend Junting who is from China and went to college in the states. I met Junting when I was studying abroad in Madrid and when I told her I was visiting China, she set me up wonderfully with friends of hers and also staying with her family in her home town of Dalian which I will visit next. Unfortunately, she is stuck in the US until she can get her work visa which won't be for a while and she hasn't been back to China for over a year. Nevertheless, she has been really helpful in assisting me in making accommodations and setting up friends of hers ... read more
August 13th 2012
I arrived in Xi'an by plane to avoid a 20 hour train ride. It is amazing just how big China really is and I was kind of surprised it was a two and a half hour plane ride from Shanghai. I had only come to spend a day and half in the city before continuing on to Beijing and for me that was plenty though there are many more things one could do outside the city. With just as bad, or maybe worse, smog as Shanghai, I was a little surprised how big the city actually was. The main part that people visit is in the inside of the ancient city walls, but the city goes on for miles outside the walls. The area inside the walls in really large in itself and I couldn't even ... read more
August 10th 2012
It really wouldn't be normal if I was able to get where I needed to go without it being a bigger ordeal that it seems like it should be. Such was was the case getting to China. With a flight delayed by 4 hours, the customs people giving me an extremely hard time because I didn't have a copy of my flight information leaving out of china (I actually hadn't booked it at that point), and then sleeping in the Shanghai airport to wait for the metro to open at 6 am left me exhausted by the time I got to my hostel. I crawled right into bed when I got there at 8am and crashed until noon. When I woke up and finally wasn't in a daze any longer, I began to appreciate the fact ... read more
August 7th 2012
Angkor Wat has been labeled as the 8th ancient wonder of the world and after visiting it is clear why. While I was a little skeptical that it was just going to be more ruins and temples, which I have seen endlessly on my trek through SE Asia, I was pleasantly surprised and a little overwhelmed by just how impressive these places were. I say these places because Angkor Wat is just one (and probably the most famous) of many different temples in an area that covers 400 sq km. The temples were used as capitals of former Khmer empires and most were built around the 12th century. People who are temple fanatics spend spend days at the sites because there is so much to see. But I can really only see so many temples before ... read more
August 7th 2012
I thought I was going to get out of SE Asia unscathed. I even made a comment to my Japanese traveling companion about how I was lucky that I hadn't gotten sick from the food yet. Well, everyone knows that you are bound to jinx yourself by saying such things and sure enough, I feel victim to a terrible food poisoning the very next morning. Terrible would really be an understatement. I was considering going to the hospital at one point. Yet, considering I was in Cambodia when this happened and I did not feel like trying out their health care system, I was able to tough it out. But it was rough! More about that in a bit... I left Vietnam for Cambodia in route back to Bangkok where I am catching a flight to ... read more
A day to visit Vietnams largest city
Published: August 7th 2012Asia » Vietnam » Southeast » Ho Chi Minh City
August 4th 2012
When I was planning out my time in Vietnam I had originally planned to spend time in Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon as most of the locals still call it). Then, however, timing wise I thought I was only going to be able to fly in and catch a bus right away to Cambodia if I was to make it back to Bangkok in time for my flight to China. But after some reevaluating, I was able to work in one full day in Vietnams largest city. I flew from DaNang, 40 km from Hoi An, to Ho Chi Minh after getting up at 5 in order to catch a taxi to the airport. Once I arrived at the airport I had to work to try and find the public bus that would cost me about ... read more
Perfect town for a little R&R
Published: August 4th 2012Asia » Vietnam » South Central Coast » Quảng Nam » Hoi An
August 2nd 2012
The morning I woke up in Hue before my motorbike journey to Hoi An, I was not really feeling 100% and actually had a really runny nose. Sure enough, by the time I got to my hostel in Hoi An, I knew I had a full blown cold and I was not to happy about that. While I blame it on the freezing train ride I had a couple days before, I know that my rather intense travel schedule the past week or so has left me a lot less rested and on lots of buses, trains, etc which are just breeding grounds for a cold. But I could not have picked a better city to get sick in. Hoi An is also a UNSECO place where the charming downtown is perfect for strolling, browsing and ... read more
Hue to Hoi An on the back of a motorbike
Published: August 4th 2012Asia » Vietnam » South Central Coast » Quảng Nam » Hoi An
August 1st 2012
When I was eating dinner in Hue with a Japanese guy I had met in Hanoi, we started talking with a Vietnamese guy that was sitting at the table next to ours. His name was Quy and he was friendly, telling us a lot about the country and asking us questions about our countries. We eventually told him we were both going to Hoi An the day after next and he asked how we were going to travel there. When we said bus, he shook his head and said, that was the boring way to go. He said we should go by motorbike. I had actually heard of this already. There is a group of guys called the Easyrider's that take foreigners across the scenic pass between the cities of Hue and Hoi An or the ... read more
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