After a busy 24 hrs with Chihiro in her lovely MANSON flat in Saitama prefecture, I planned to head southwards to Kyuushuu, on　Sunday morning. The trip to Nagasaki was fast! Not a patch on some other trains in the world, the Hikari shinkansen whisked me from Tokyo central to Nagasaki via Shin osaka and Hakata, the terminus of Fukuoka station at the northern most part of Kyuushuu. The trip of 900km took about 8 hrs, that is including some stops of up to 40 mins where I felt it a good to fix the cock up of getting the incorrect adaptor [View Full Entry]

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Konnicha wa tomodachi to watashi no kazoku! Hello to friends and family Before proceeding I wish to apolgise in advance for several things : 1. this keyboard is quite obviously foreign and defaults to traditional japanese script when i am not looking which is virtually never as i am a opeless typist , hey that last mistake sounds like somethign from Coro street 2. Like China in 2007,the shift key amongst others has depressing issues, in that it is always depressed and never getting the opportunity to bounce back in to a positive relationship with the fellow keys 3. The room [View Full Entry]

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After months of internet planning, letter writing and parcel sending.... I am off to see Japanese penpals and long lost friends after many years of not! ...... I hope to have some stories and pictures to tell the story soon. Blast off date is May 24th, for 24 days in search of unadulterated washoku, onsen and the elusive Japanese 'nessie' of Lake Tazawako.... Some facts: The purpose? Obligation (16 yrs is a long time to write to eachother yet never see eachother!), and leisure (infinished business from highschool trip, places I missed and am desperate to see) Style of travel? Budget, [View Full Entry]

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My last day in China was packed! No rest for the wicked so after a late night and early rise I headed to the markets (Pearl) again for some bargaining and souvenir gathering. Thank god for maps and the grid-like orientation of Beijing, which comes in handy when trying to navigate from Hohai district (lake area west of Forbidden city and Tianenman Sq) to Chongwenmen district in the south east corner of inner Beijing. The tree lined streets and qwuiet hutongs off them offer some respite from the chaos of the main drag through town (all 40km of it!). Along with [View Full Entry]

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Beijing is huge. We arrived here by train early Monday morning at the civilised hour of 7.30am (certainly more civilised than our regular 5am arrivals on past overnight trips!). The train had special features, like a pleasantly smelling toilet that remained so after 14 hrs of chugging along northwards and plenty 'transactions', a food trolley that regularly delivered 750mL bottles of beer to my alcoholic group-mates, a boiler for every carriage (handy for those heat and eat meals needing hot water of the Chinese variety, i.e. instant noodles, which they all seem to subside on, next to cigare [View Full Entry]

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Hua shan was an overnight trip away from Xian, 2 hrs by public train or 3 hrs returning via congested motorway network (more later!) We left our large packs at the not so ritzy train station hotel (this was for a quick getaway on our return to the lovely moated and walled city of Xian) at 7.30am Saturday morning and headed across the road to the train station, tickets purchased by Jordan and costing only 20 yuan one way. After a long wait, we pushed our way through the gates, and eventually boarded the train. It was 'every man for themselves' [View Full Entry]

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phew, I made it to an internet cafe in time to escape the leaping tigers and terracotta warriors on my tail. In fact this is a very authentic Chinese internet cafe - it is full of pimply faced Chinese boys gaming or chatting with their cyber mates, in darkened premises with glare'y screen. For an old fart like me that meams that I am having difficulty seeing what I type. So perhaps you should rea btween hte lisne!...And to top it off the shift key is permanetly stuck so if i talk about someone or something that is obviously of superior [View Full Entry]

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Ni Hao from Lijiang! To recount the past few days for you, I left Sapa and crossed the border via Lao Cai on the afternoon of Wednesday October 17th. Lao Cai is just that, a border town nestled on one side of the range that seperates Sapa and Yunnan province. We literally took our Transit van there, did the official requirements and walked into China over a briddge. People looked like they were out for a Sunday stroll crossing between countries, it was quite unusual. I guess I did not expect a big bang when we entered China (more on big [View Full Entry]

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After the lively supper in SaPa, and well informed briefing from our guide Dinh, it was time to set off to Ban Ho village. Dinh was a real character - his name is pronounced 'Ding' as in ding dong, or ding dong the witch is dead. He has a penchant for karaoke, which is taken very seriously in these parts, and is particularly fond of 'I'm all out of love', theme song from titanic, hello is it me you are looking for (Lionel ritchie) and various others with a slant towards love songs. We were regularly informed over the trek of [View Full Entry]

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Trip One (Vietnamese Experience, comfort, 15 days ) ended at the same time that trip two with Intrepid was commencing, saturday. The choices - do I remain at fancy hotel with non-flushing toilet and mahogany and mother of pearl chairs, or do I go for the Victory hotel in what seemed to be the slum quarter of Hanoi for my first night with the new group? Well I have to say (how can I not, 'concise' is not in my vocabulary) parting was not sweet sorrow from group one, although they were all a lovely bunch of mainly shopping mad women [View Full Entry]

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