Sorry for the long blog silence。 We've been travelling quite a bit and continue to run into awful computers when we do find them. Since the last post we made a visit to the village of Tiantouzhai at the 'Dragon's Backbone' rice terraces. It was a wild and bumpy 2.5 hour bus ride from Guilin and a 45 minute walk through the terraces and the village of Dazhai to get to Tiantouzhai. The view was pretty breathtaking. The mountains all around us were entirely formed into puzzle-like terraces. They've been farmed like this for thousands of years. Small footpaths are used to get from village to village and ponies are saddled with farm and construction supplies to move things around. Tourism must boom there in summer months but we were two of only four visitors to ... read more

We arrived in Guilin today after a twenty two hour train ride. The train was very exciting. We got off to an interesting start as we came very close to missing the train. Not only did we underestimate the total time it would take to get to the station but we got held up at every possible junction on the Shanghai metro. We arrived at the station about twelve minutes before our train was scheduled to depart. The railway station is enormous and very difficult to navigate for a foreigner. We looked like the scene from Home Alone while we sprinted through the train station with our packs on but, thankfully we made it with just a few minutes to spare. The landscape leaving Shanghai was pretty remarkable. For about two hours or so outside the ... read more

We've spent fourteen hours in the air and two nights in Shanghai since the last update. After we landed in Shanghai we took the maglev into town. I've told lots of people about how exciting riding it is but, it really is amazing. You can really feel the speed and it's amazing to be looking out onto the Chinese country side. Riding the maglev gives me the same feeling as riding a big wheel! We took the metro (subway) to our hostel and have been using it to get all around town. It took about as long to get accustomed to as any public transit system you've never ridden in the US before. Thankfully there are English directions under all the Chinese. The trains are all connected like one big long car and they're really smooth ... read more

We're chaotically packing and attempting to make plans for things to do while we're there. Nora made this map that gives an idea of where we plan on going. It'll be interesting to see how much we stick to these plans. Blowing in the wind is the name of the game for this trip. http://g.co/maps/krmzw... read more