khughes

For the may break the plan is to spend 6 days in Beijing, whilst applying for a Mongolian visa, then finish off with 1 or hopefully 2 days in Xi'an. Day 1 - Sat Apr 28 I flew to Beijing on Saturday morning. I appreciated how the beijing terminals are walking distance away so it eliminates the need of a time-consuming shuttle unlike recently visited megacities: Shanghai and Manila. I caught the airport express train to the city for 25 yuan. Upon arriving, I broke out my trusty compass and map and navigated myself to my hostel which was tucked away in a hutong (alley) some distance away. I got settled and figured out my course of action. I decided on visiting the Summer Palace in the outskirts of the city. I walked along to the ... read more

A much delayed blog: Less than 6 days after I got back from a 5 week long excursion to Vietnam and Philippines with the (relatively) warm balmy weather I was off again, this time to the opposite temperature extreme: Harbin (or Haer'bin) to see the Ice Festival. The train was booked so I headed down to the train station. No english spoken or written anywhere so I was left to my own wits to figure out where to go. The first problem was that my ticket was all Chinese and I couldn't even tell any of the information aside from date and time (numbers). The second problem was that everything in the train station was also in Chinese. Not even sure what I was looking for I tried to match anything on the ticket to any ... read more

Feb 5thCebu - Puerto Princesa I woke up and it was raining a bit, and I had a flight at 11am so I decided to not try to see Cebu instead take an easy morning. I grabbed a taxi to the airport, and this time negotiated a flat rate that was the exact same as I paid for the metered to the hotel. If you know the flat rate, it’s the way to go. Unlike the old wisdom of meters being safe, it’s just not true anymore. I got to the airport, which was relatively small for the second largest transport hub in the country. Cebu Pacific Air (which I exclusively flew with) is based out of here. Virtually every airport in Philippines has only 2 destinations: Manila (or the nearby Clark) and Cebu. I got ... read more

Jan 30th This was another long (12 hour) bus ride, except during the day. It was a sleeper but had less leg room so was cramped. Every long distance bus in Asia stops at these bus stop restaurants with quick meals (usually not very good), maybe some snacks and public bathrooms. It’s the standard procedure. Normally with night buses you hit them at night and they’re messy forgettable affairs. This one was easily the nicest bus lunch stop location I have ever seen. It was on the ocean with palm trees and a little golf course, and dry rocky mountains in the background. After waiting an extra 20 minutes for a Chinese family to get their act together and realize that the entire bus was waiting for them (not that they cared), we were once again ... read more

Jan 23rd I woke up early in the morning to start getting ready for the upcoming 3 day Halong Bay trip. I had decided to go with the hostel’s trip as they were one of the only nes running, and they weren’t charging excessive “Tet” fees. After a breakfast of French bread, there was a large group of 66 crowded in the hostel. After a short spiel, we headed off in about 5-6 buses. The trip there was uneventful, punctuated by a commissioned stop to on of the common tourist stores (read: trap), where everything was 50%-1000% more expensive. After a 45 minute long ’20 minute stop’ the caravan of buses headed off to Halong City to the wharfs. I slept most of the way. The wharf wasn’t much to speak of. The small docks were ... read more