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June 9th 2007
Yagur stream Middle East » Israel » The Carmel and Golan By ygaller June 9th 2007Hiking down Yagur stream starting in Usfiyya and ending at Kibutz Yagur... read more
January 15th 2007
Pictures from a Friday spent hiking the Zafit and Smadar riverbeds, near the southern part of the Dead Sea... read more
June 3rd 2006
A case study in how to get yourself out of a mess you should have never gotten yourself into in the first place: My dad asked me to get an mp3 player for him if I found a good deal while in China. Yesterday, while at the Silk Market in Beijing (which sells pretty much anything, not just silk), I decided to do even better and bought an mp4 player. I have sharp bargaining skills. Most of them involve looking confounded and undecided, things that come quite naturally to me, until the salesperson is so frustrated he will go down to any price, just to put me out of my misery. From an 850Y starting price I bargained the sales lady down to a price of 400Y. This seemed like a steal. The player was purported ... read more
May 25th 2006
When you travel around China, you come into contact with the local population. You come into no less contact with other tourists. What people who have not been to China do not realize is that when talking of other tourists in China, the vast majority of them are Chinese! Subjectively, it feels as if internal tourism eclipses that of foreigners by several magnitudes. Over time, you get to know different types of Chinese tourists. As a generalization, one can group them into several caregories, depending on personality, economic status and reaction to other foreign tourists. Here are a few of the types, which I've had the pleasure of encountering: The Indifferent and sometimes Passively Hostile tourist - Middle aged, middle class and feels that you're trespassing on his Middle Kingdom. Has a tendency to take his ... read more
May 19th 2006
Part IV of the backdoor route into Yangshou. Our saga continues. Last time I left you in Zhaoxing, that Lijiang wannabe of a village. After an early morning tour of the village, we were ready to move on. In fact, we were ready to move on even before the tour. But time must sometimes be killed. Our objective today was Longsheng. We wanted to get there in order to see the nearby terraces the next day. It was clear from the beginning that this day would be one of travel. There was no sightseeing planned. Just get from point A to point B in the quickest way possible. We did not foresee what this day had in store for us. The nine o'clock bus passed by on schedule and scooped us up, on the way to ... read more
May 18th 2006
Part III of the backdoor route into Yangshou. Zengchong is so small it doesn't have any proper accomodations. We were hosted by a family in the village. The family was that of the head of the Chinese communist party in the village, and they were the only ones providing accomodation. The rooms were nice enough and after a good dinner which our hosts cooked for us we retired for the night and slept on the floor (with some blankets for padding). There are no showers here. Personally, I was determined to wait with some even more basic sanitary needs until we got out of there, given the poor state of the facilities. We had learnt our lesson from the day before. No more lazy awakenings at a quarter past six. Today we would begin our day ... read more
May 17th 2006
Part II of the backdoor into Yangshuo. When Ayelet, Naor and I planned the backdoor route into Yangshuo, we were all in agreement that the whole thing shouldn't take more than about four to five days. The reason for this is that we still had a lot on our plate, as far as plans for China, and none of us wanted to lose too much time travelling this route. We earmarked three villages we wanted to visit on the way: Xijiang, Zengchong and Zhaoxian. After that a stop in Longsheng and on to Yangshuo. This meant that we had about a day for each place, including travel to the place. The idea, in general, was to leave each morning from the village we had stayed at the previous night and make it to the next one ... read more
Li Ming, Jenny and their classmates are sitting in the classroom
Published: May 20th 2006Asia » China » Guizhou
May 16th 2006
Li Ming, Jenny and their classmates are sitting in the classroom. Mr. Wood comes in. Mr. Wood: Good morning, class! Class: Good morning, Mr. Wood! Mr. Wood: Let's begin our lesson. Oh! Look outside! It's snowing! What a cold, snowy day! (Everyone looks out of the windows. Snow is falling!) Li Ming: The snow is beautiful! But why is it snowing in April? It never snows in April in Shijiazhuang. Mr. Wood: Really? Spring comes later in Canada. But it doesn't always snow in winter. Often it is very bright and sunny. The days are short and the night are long. But the sky is usually bright and blue. What do you like to do in winter in Canada, Li Ming? Li Ming: I like to put on my winter jacket, my scarf and my mittens ... read more
May 14th 2006
- I'm going to England next week. - You don't say? So am I! - Well, I'll probably see you there. Hey Kids! Can you find what's wrong with this conversation? It takes just two letters to correct it. See if you can figure it out. Come on, it's not that hard. Really. Keep trying. Not there yet? I'll give you another minute. Well? Still nothing. Ok, here's the solution. The correct conversation should go like this: - Well, I'll improbably see you there. You see kids, when two people go to England, and don't make any prior arrangements to meet, the chance that they will just bump into each other is somewhere in the ridiculously infinitesimal fractions of a percent. And that's just what seems to be happening to me throughout my trip. Guizhou is ... read more
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