We spent Christmas and New year in Hainan at the Rainbow Bar. The Rainbow bar is a pretty cool place, it's right on the water. A wicked band plays some decent tunes. The guitar player was especially good. Also the beer is worthy of note. We enjoyed hanging out at the western bar, "Rainbow." I (Mazi) have to say we splurged a little going to Rainbow Bar a few times just to bring back some western food in our diet. The bar was decored with flags of hockey teams, license plates from Canada and the states, western food is not bad [View Full Entry]

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After the Kayak episode, we were ready to head away from Sanya and away from the tourist trap. So we headed off the next day to the Jianfengling Rainforest. It was an interesting journey that took us 4 hours with three different modes of transportation. Geoff and I hopped on a long distance bus to a small town, we thought this would be more relaxing than sitting at the beach. As we were thinking positive about our Hainan experience, the bus driver made us get off several towns early because there was no one else on the bus. So, the bus [View Full Entry]

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Palm trees and white sand beaches combined with lots of noise and the fact that it’s a little dirty reminds you that you are still in China despite being in paradise. This sums up our beach destination at Sanya. In fact, the staff at the Blue Sky Youth Hostel greet you with, "Welcome to Paradise!" Sanya is also a popular destination for vacationing Russians and the city is geared towards this population of tourists. This was easily determined when most often we were approached by vendors and hawkers speaking Russian first and then realizing we didn't understand, if they could, they [View Full Entry]

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While we rested in Hong Kong after our initial trip to China we got to have some great Cantonese style meals. This is an example of Cantonese style Hot Pot. It's basically a big pot of boiling soup with a number of ingrediants that you add to it like you would for Fondu. The ingrediants included Fish, Prawns, beef filet, Fish balls, Beef Balls, veggies, mushrooms, tofu and won-tons. After the ingredients are boiled you scoop them out and dip them in soy sauce, vinegar or eat them as is. Yum!! [View Full Entry]

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These are pictures of a hike I did with a friend of Mazi's family, Nicola and his classmates at Tung Chung. It was a grey day but was interesting to see grasslands in Hong Kong where I thought it was mostly rainforest. [View Full Entry]

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After our visit to panoramic Heavan Lake at Changbai Shan National Park we caught the train from Baihe to Shenyang (hard seat only). This train ride was quite the experience, seeing live chickens in a plastic bag to a baby boy that almost pee'ed on Mazi's leg. To sum this train ride up we both got really sick with the flu. I guess our immune system wasn't really prepared for a fourteen hour trip with the rustic travellers of Northeast China. It was long and arduous but we killed time by playing cards with a pair of Hong Kong travelers that [View Full Entry]

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We took a fast train from Beijing to Harbin (about 7 hours). The fast trains travel at 214 Kph top speed (fyi). Harbin was our first stop outside Beijing and it was a little intimidating at first. The train station is across from the Long Distance Bus Station and a large square contains countless taxis, two city bus stops an underground mall and hawkers everywhere selling everything from nuts, to shoe-shines, or guiding you to seedy hotels. It is a lot more chaotic a little dirty and at least as noisy as Beijing. The air in Harbin is also pretty thick [View Full Entry]

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From Harbin we headed east towards Korea with our final destination being Changbai Shan. Changbai Shan is a Mountain and National Park and is also a spiritual place for the Korean and Chinese cultures. We took a bus in the early morning from Harbin to Jilin (~ 4 hours). Mostly we passed drying Corn fields along the way. The air didn't get any better either. We had a nice stay at the Home Inn in Jilin and went for Mongolian hot pot again. The people here were especially friendly. A boy named, Mike, introduced himself to us, I guess wanting to [View Full Entry]

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Continued... We were feeling more comfortable with Fa after he took us to the train station and finding out he had a son, 18 who lived in a nearby town. We drove through a forest and eventually made it to the park entrance. When we arrived he had some friends of his join us, they were there to sell us something but we ignored them and moved towards the admission area. Trying to leave Fa behind we were unable to shake him and we arranged to have him pick us up after we were finished at the park. After paying the [View Full Entry]

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Great Wall at Jinshanling and Simatai. This was a must see! The Great Wall was amazing. Being able to take pictures of the Wall without anyone in the background was a bonus. After chatting with Apple at Backpackers hostel, it was a better idea joining this tour up to the Great Wall because by the time we pay for a ride up and entrance fee, the cost was about the same if we found our way up to the wall ourselves. Our tour group consisted of ourselves and Andreas from Berlin and Maricio from Columbia who were great companions on this [View Full Entry]

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