Goodbye China Getting into Vietnam from China was smooth sailing 99% of the way. I stayed at the boarder town Hekou and all I needed to do was walk 200m into a new country. "What can possibly go wrong??" Well in my experience, pretty much anything. This morning I was detained at the chinese checkpoint by Chinese Army officials!! At the Chinese checkpoint my bags were screened as per normal security measures. But then the Chinese army who was looking at the screen told me to go into the room. I quickly did as I was told and did a brain [View Full Entry]

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Tibet I miss you so so much!! Second day out and I miss you already. My 1 month in Tibet has been an incredible journey and I'm so glad to have had the chance to experience it--Tibet is changing fast. I arrived in Lhasa a few days after the new opening of a train line that connects Tibet to the rest of China. It marks a serious sea change to come that travellers who have been to Lhasa 5, 15 years ago can only fathom. Tibet today in 2006 is already a haven for backpackers. There are trendy cafes lining the [View Full Entry]

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Before you Buy the Ticket * Please reconsider if you are taller than 5 foot; * Please forget about it if you are 6 foot; * If you are 6 foot and above (eg. Tom) please ask yourself, "Am I feeling suicidal today? or is life really not that bad?" The Truth about the Bus Most sleeper buses I've travelled on in China have been very comfortable. You get a bunk bed allocated with a blanket and sometimes even a pillow. There is enough leg room for me (I am tiny though) and even room for me to store a [View Full Entry]

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Six days of travel along the Southern Silk Road in taxis, a jeep, minibuses, and a sleeper bus, and I have made it in one piece across the boarder to Golmud. The intention is to make it across to Tibet... It has been a bizarre 6 days on the road...So many things happened where we stare at each other and utter, "What is going on?? Why is this happening?" Only in China can you check into a bus station hotel and come back an hour later and the room be conveniently transformed into a construction site. As a once wise aussie [View Full Entry]

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Kashgar is an amazing place to just wander... Here are some images from a day at the Livestock market and the backstreets of its Old Town. [View Full Entry]

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Hi Mum, I'm in Afganistan Just kidding....I have spent just 2 days in a remote town called Karakul, 3hrs from the boarder of Pakistan and Afgan. It was the first time I really felt the contradictions of this land in every sense of the word. Travelling 6hrs through rough terrain, I watched the landscape change from desert to ice mountians. The most incredible was a scene of fireary red mountains against a backdrop of glaciers. Where else do u see camels on a sand dune and a huge glacial melt behind it? At Karakul, I lived with a family with ancestery [View Full Entry]

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It's been along time coming but I can finally say I am loving China! I'm in a bizarre place, a province called "Xinjiang" north of the Middle Kingdom. Xinjiang is boardered by Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. This amazing cross road in Asia has an incredible mix of middle eastern, central asian and chinese culture. Here are some of my notes along the silk road. The Green Eyed "Chinese" Yeah there really are -- and they are called the "Uigher" (Weegar) people. Here, the "chinese" sometimes have long wavey brown hair, piercing blue/ green eyes a [View Full Entry]

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In my usual last minute style, I found myself on a bus heading towards Songpan. I met the only other backpacker on the bus and decided to head down together to Huanglong National Park--another of China's jewels that I am so glad to have seen with my own eyes. Unbelievable colored limestone ponds of blue but in strange and large honey comb pool like formations. Ohh did i feel like jumping in. It was fantasy world again, just so prestine, so incredibly beautiful. It must have been amazing to live here as a tibetan many moons ago. On the way to [View Full Entry]

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I took a walk today about 4km off the main street in Jiuzhagou. I saw the huge Tibetan flags on a hill and decided to explore the village. A mixture of old wooden shaks, Tibetan houses and the newer chinese tiled buildings. Heard the sounds of kids playing.... trouble. They were playing skip the roap and screamed their lungs off, running like headless chooks when i took photos of them. They loved playing hide and seek with my camera and running over to see their faces on my digital screen. Kids, these ones were pretty crazy! Parents were no where to [View Full Entry]

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Hello, hello from the most beautiful place on earth! Two days at the Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve, and I don't want to leave. I had never imagined a place so amazing its untrue... travellers raved about it, but I had to see it to believe it. I headed up to Northern Sichuan from Chengdu on a 10 hour bus ride, and the journey was worth it. Saw the worst toilets EVER, (You just squat in a shared cubical gutter thing, so you see everything flowing past!!).... BUT also saw some a m a z i n g views-- ice mountain peaks, alphine [View Full Entry]

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