Page 6 of mr mink Travel Blog Posts


Asia » South Korea » Seoul » Jongno-gu June 5th 2012

I almost could not believe it but a few minutes ago, at almost 11 PM, it actually started raining on the tile roof - naturally just after I had done my daily wash (the traveller's essential to keep up with). However it now seems to have stopped. It has been a very steady max 28° every day virtually for the last week or more and although there is some vaguely stormy weather indications from Yahoo for later in the week there was nothing forecast this early. Nevertheless it is my intention to give you a quick update to the real present time (given the live commentary beginning of this). I sent off the last blog this morning from my hanok in Bukchon, which is the broad name given to the traditional area between the two main ... read more
my Bukchon hanok room
Bukchon hanok room
Technomart interior

Asia » South Korea » Seoul June 4th 2012

Think I will just do a quick one to keep this one rolling otherwise I will forget what I have done. I spent 3 nights at the Sutton Hotel as an initial base, then simply walked to my next home at the City Park Hotel for 4 nights at a cheaper rate (about $50 per night). This had a huge TV (see pic) and fast internet - the upload rate was insane compared to Oz - twice the download speed! Some snaps of the "curtains" on the car park to protect the identity of those who might be taking a long horizontal lunch. It was close to the Changdeokgung palace so naturally went there. Will leave the snaps to tell the tale. Obviously the very distinctive paint style of decoration is uniquely Korean. There is also ... read more
-CityPark htl room
City Park curtains cars
Wedding Hall

Asia » South Korea » Seoul May 30th 2012

In case you did not already know, I am in South Korea for a little over five weeks. This might be considered to be somewhat of an overkill given that the country is relatively small, but it does likely mean that I will be able to truly dawdle if I want to, or are just lazy. The main problem of course is that I have already been here six days and have not got the blog quite off the ground yet (until of course this goes out). There will have to be some brevity therefore on what has already happened. Hopefully this can be made up with happy snaps of whatever it is worth looking at. So I arrived here on Monday 28 May. Got the airport train ARREX from the airport to Seoul Station (about ... read more
Seoul subway
green tea latte (hot)
demo rice paddy

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Nanjing December 19th 2011

This will likely be my last blog from China/Nanjing -- although I might sneak another one in once I get home if you are lucky should I miss something. Anyway this was to be my penultimate day in Nanjing so I thought I had better try and cross off a a few things that I had been too slack to get around to doing. I was all intent on making first off the Nanjing Memorial Hall to what the Japanese did in 1937. I checked with the hotel as to what was the best metro stop to go to (it is always annoying when such things are only 75 m off the Lonely Planet map) and headed off to the nearest metro stop which happens to be on the same crosstown E-W line (the other runs ... read more
street sausages
some kind of street candy
more dried meats

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Nanjing December 18th 2011

I blathered on rather too long in the last one -- with a few snaps -- so more snaps will make up for hopefully brief text (otherwise I will never get to bed). That was my excuse last night -- had to catch up with sleep so went to bed at 10:30 PM and did not get up till 10:30 AM. Just spent some time in the room looking at the Net and so on and finding out what sites were blocked by the Chinese cyber snoopers - quite a lot like Facebook etc. Anyway finally got out late in the afternoon and decided to take a metro ride to the east to the Ming palace ruins area, being well aware that there was virtually nothing left. This was indeed the case, particularly when it is ... read more
Nanjing 1912 KFC
Taiping Lu S
metro cleaning

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Nanjing December 17th 2011

As I said last time sometimes there has to be a "gap" so I can catch up with myself and have a rest. After breakfast yesterday (was it really?) in Suzhou I went for a quick walk to try and catch up with the canal type area. However the Lonely Planet rightly says most of them have been filled over and I'd likely got as much a view of them before. My train was at 11:44 AM so I wanted to leave from the hotel at 11 to give myself enough time. However with a slight delay on checkout and then having to rush over to Renmin Lu to try and hail a taxi on a busy Saturday morning things were a little delayed. Fortunately this taxi driver was doing all the shortchanges and shortcuts that ... read more
Nanjing 1912
a university sign
Nanjing 1912 again

Asia » China » Jiangsu » Suzhou December 16th 2011

There was a bit of a "gap" there folks due to the fact that occasionally I have to have a rest from the (self-imposed) tyranny of the blog. I am now in Suzhou which is about 45 minutes from Shanghai on a relatively fast CRH train. You should see a picture of the actual train that I arrived on below. The trick was of course to get to the station in Shanghai and a taxi was necessary for this which cost about $3.50. Then it was a question of finding out where to buy the ticket, as the station is huge (see also picture attached of the frontage). I tried the automated machines, on which you can select English, but ground to a halt I thought when it requested me to place my Chinese ID on ... read more
the CRH at Suzhou
my chicken skewer snack
local market greens

Asia » China » Shanghai » Pudong December 14th 2011

You would be lucky to guess all of the threads in the heading of course. I decided that today I was going to be a monster and actually do three things. Which is pretty major from me as I normally do not start doing anything until about 2 PM and then at 5 PM it is virtually dark! Anyway as I will be out of Shanghai tomorrow (with another partial day here or not just before I fly out) I decided that it was the day that I had to do the high points of the tall buildings in Pudong. Trouble was today was hazy -- which is pretty much Shanghai all over really, but looking across the river at the aforementioned tall buildings did not give any great confidence that the rather large investment on ... read more
Jinmao, newbie & SWFC
Pudong glass
Jinmao haze

Asia » China » Shanghai » Jing An December 13th 2011

This will likely begin and end with food. As I had bought some bananas last night that served as a sort of breakfast but decided that I had better have a relatively early lunch. It was indeed fortunate that barely 100 m from the Hotel is a place called Shanghai Grandmother which supposedly served hearty food. So that seemed as good as any for a top up. I ordered some cold eggplant and garlic dish to keep up my vegetable component - there was virtually crushed garlic on top. However this was nothing compared with the pork and black fungus and garlic. There were only about five very thin slices of fried pork in it, quite a lot of black fungus which was okay, but an unbelievable amount of sliced garlic (to the extent that I ... read more
taxi men carriers?
fr. metro @ Changshou Rd
more hirise

Asia » China » Shanghai » Huangpu December 12th 2011

After the late as possible breakfast I returned to my room to prepare some photographs for later posting on the net -- did not get around to doing my blog then and a day late sometimes makes it difficult to remember stuff. Anyway I had decided to switch hotels from the Salvo, which although nice, it is however around 750Rmb ($125), to the rather cheaper Baron Business Hotel at 400Rmb ($65). So it was a simple walk of a few minutes over to Fuzhou Rd and a little closer to the Bund. Had a precautionary look at the room first and it was fine -- a generous size with two large single beds and a very modern bathroom and cable Internet. So apart from the 20th floor view, with 31st floor for breakfast at the Salvo, ... read more
more skyline
a pink wall of nothing
empty roads




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