Blogs from China, Asia - page 2270

Well. So Russell and some computer dude finally got the system up and running so now I have Internet in my own room in China. (Which is freaking kick booty and means I can add pictures and write on here whenever I want to.) And my good buddy Seth who I haven't talked to in a long time figured out how to talk to somebody (like in person) using AOL Instant Messenger. So that means that all I have to do is be on-line the same time you are and you can talk to me for free over the Internet! It's a bit echoy but it's not that bad considering the fact it's going such a long way around the world for free. Some absolutely insane things are happening around here and have been happening around ... read more

Not quite, but the Chinese do have some fanciful names. So now that we finally are in our own place and have the internet (at last1) I can resume the tale of our travels. I left you in China in Lijang. This is where we'll briefly resume before showing you the picturesque Tiger Leaping Gorge. This has just taken me 2 hours (those pics take an age to load - so you'll have to wait for the next installment before you can see the amazing Tibetan faces of Zhongdian.... read more

Well, you'll notice that this entry is missing something. That's because we're missing something. Last night in the hutongs of Beijing, someone got into Justin's pocket and nabbed our camera. Fortunately, we had uploaded all of our pictures up until Beijing onto our snapfish account, but we lost everything that we had taken of Beijing, including (so sad, so sad) the pictures of us at the Great Wall. You'll just have to take our word that it was stunning, and we looked great up there. Beijing will look beautiful for the 2008 Olympics. Right now, just about every building and tourist site is under scaffolding. Also, someone is going to have to rewrite every guidebook and map because nothing is right anymore. We spent hours (literally hours) looking for buildings that we eventually found our had ... read more

We have been in China now for 5 days and haven't stopped! We are staying with Jesper, a friend of Kays from Uni, who has let us run loose in his his high rise appartment for the duration of our stay, and he has also given up his master bedroom for us! We are in heaven and have a Kitchen!! It will be tough going back to a hostel after this. So far we have been to the Great Wall, the Silk Market-3 times, a Japanese and Greek restaurant, to a dinner party and had our own dinner party/poker night, where of course we cooked. Kay and I have now played 2 games of poker, I am rubbish but Kay seems to have a knack for it and won her first game and came second on ... read more

So, although I've yet to have had a normal weekend here yet as just a regular resident of Shanghai, this weekend was already more exciting than normal because I had my first visitor! My friend from Rice, Doug, who is studying in Hong Kong this semester skyped me last Tuesday that he was ready to book a flight to Shanghai for the weekend, and sure enough he showed up here on Friday night! I took Shanghai's superfast and supermodern train (the Maglev) to get him. It went 430km/hr (in miles...i have no idea) and got to the airport in 7 minutes. The one thing they haven't perfected yet in their speed to modernize is that the train was quite shaky. But compared to the trains we took to and from Suzhou, another canal town an hour ... read more