A German, an Italian, and an American walk into a Chinese bowling alley...

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the beginning of a good joke i'd imagine. But it just so happened to be our day yesterday to celebrate one of the fellow traveler's birthday. Michela is from Padova and is traveling down through asia, south eastern asia, and onto india. because she's been treaveling for over 40 days now her wish was to go to Lonely Planet (what we like to now call lazy planet)'s guide to traveling... they suggested an italian restaurant which turned out to be the cake counter of a chinese bowling alley.

I've decided to take a small detour in my trip. Rather than heading directly west to Mongolia, i've decided to head south and see some other things in this huge country. MOngolia will be only about a 10 day trip because it's just too damn cold to do much longer than that. it's not too cold to be in, it's too cold to be outside in.

I'm not quite in the mood of writing very many details of the trip... however a few recent headlines.
No robberies yet.
Spent a day at the great wall, something wonderful but a bit too touristy.
Today spent the day on a bike seeing most of Beijing. Their bike traffic is more than their car traffic. which of course is a bit strange... aggressive bike riding? almost got hit by 10 trucks. and my bike didn't have brakes.

got a 10 dollar massage! actually two. one was crap. one was great.
imagine 10$ for 90 minutes!

promise it'll get more interesting at another time.


s

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