Filling in the blanks...

---

First let me say that I am obviously a TERRIBLE travel blogger. My last entry was all the way back in Hat Yaii, in Thailand. 11 months ago! 11! I was just going to completely skip the last 11 months and pick up the tale with the fun I've been having in the present day... but then I looked in my hand-written journal and saw quite a few entries (not many considering it was over 11 months!) that could be interesting. But nah, nevermind. So here is what happened the past 11 months in short summary:

After Hat Yai, I headed for Malaysia and struggled to enjoy and make the most of my last month traveling alone. I did a pretty good job of it and made some good travel buddies such as Jacob and Sarah and also Emily and Chris. I spent Xmas in the Cameron Highlands and New Years in KL where I also met up with the Malaysian guys I'd met ever-so-briefly in Vientiane, Laos. I traveled all over the eastern peninsular of Malaysia and also Singapore. Finally I flew to Vietnam to meet Kjersti (the girlfriend)

In Vietnam I got to meet up with some friends Erica and Dave who had couchsurfed with me in Shanghai and then Kjersti and I spent 7 great weeks together traveling around Vietnam and Cambodia. In Hanoi, I was broke-as and it was decided that I should head back to Chengdu with Kjersti to see where our relationship was going because we weren't ready to say goodbye just yet. So to my surprise I found myself back in china

In Chengdu I got a job teaching English at a private training centre where I ended up working for 7 months. During these 7 months my Chinese greatly improved. Kjersti and I grew closer together, especially after moving in together, I learned a lot about china from my students, I went back to shanghai for a week of work with my old company, I did a visa run to HK, Kjersti and I went to Guam for two weeks (my first trip home in 5 years) I made some great friends in "the DU" and I spent a lot of time stressing out about escaping china and getting back into engineering (when?where?why?how?). I had many countries in mind.

About 11 weeks ago I went to Qingdao for another great beer fest with my shanghai friend julian, during this time I finally settled on going to Australia. I decided this for many, many, reasons and despite the fact that I knew Kjersti would be going back to Norway to finish up her University degree. I also set the date of my departure for early November and pledged to make it happen.

I made it happen. I flew out of Chengdu for Australia on the 1st of November.

Life stays interesting.

So I'm contemplating continuing this blog now, Instead of a journey to the East it will now be a journey back to the West. Not sure where I am going with this.

Want to see some photos from the past eleven months? Shamefully I don't have practically any from my days in Chengdu, as my camera died in the Taman Negara Rainforest in Malaysia. After this all of my photos are courtesy of Kjersti's camera. And with Facebook blocked in China I have not been able to pool together photos taken by friends. But anyways... here's the link PHOTOS

---