Blogs from China, Asia - page 2315

What can one say about spending three days on a Chinese train? By the time we reached Beijing, Gerry and I had grown accustomed to the constant guttural hacking, noodle slurping, toilet stench and crying babies accompanying perhaps every train in this vast country. The train was hardly full, and yet it seemed like we were all crawling over each other every time we got out of our tine beds. Besides the obscene amounts of book reading we did, most of the trip included looking out of the window at the countryside whizzing by. The color scheme of China seems to be different than other countries. It included lots of grays, dark reds, greens yellows and black. About every 10 minutes we would pass another pollution belching factory. I have actually been pretty taken aback at ... read more

Whoops I forgot to put this one in! I think more people were looking at the strange westerner holding a Koala up for this photo that at the actual warriors. Pretty amazing detail in these guys hey! It took over four hours to walk the great wall, we nearly got thrown off of the side by guards when someone didn't want to pay one of the toll. Don't mess with those dudes man!!!... read more

Well, its hard to believe but today is our last day in Lhasa. We leave tomorrow morning for Chongqing which is south of Chengdu and the start of the Yangtse river cruise. The past 2 days we just roamed the streets of Lhasa enjoying all the sites. We also found out for $.70 per kilo we could ship all our cold weather gear to Shanghai, so we included a Tibetan horn and a few other misc items... 33 lbs lighter, our packs are back to where they should be @ 20lbs! We spent 2 days in Samye staying at the Samye Monastery guesthouse. We rode the pilgrim bus which was fascinating. The evening was very quiet and we enjoyed just walking around the area. The countryside reminded us of Idaho. Its been nice to see the ... read more

earthquake in japan resulted in flight being deferred to following day. i was a little inconvenienced but eventually accepted the flow. provided with very comfrotable hotel room at crowne plaza hotel for overnight stay. hope that this will be a foretaste of my china experience. ... read more

Despues de 16 horas en el tren llegamos a Chengdu desde Xi'an a las 5 de la madrugada, Estaba lloviznando cuando llegamos. Teniamos planeado ir a un hostal que no esta en ninguna guia "Mix & Backpackers Guesthouse", pero estabamos muy cansados y no se por que nos fiumos con uno de esos pesados que estan en las estaciones, acabamos en el hostal de la juventud, el taxi se supone que era gratis, pero uno de los backpackers que venia con nosotros lo pago. Nos dejo en una calle senyalando a un callejon oscuro y en obras. El callejon de la muerte estaba lleno de barro y pasarelas de madera, estaban haciendo obras en el alcantarillado y la calle daba pena. A duras penas encontramos el Hostal, que estaba completamente cerrado. Cuando entramos uno de los ... read more