Blogs from Asia - page 14703

Nothing to update from Africa, so I've put on the photos from my previous trip to Hong Kong just to keep my blog active.....I've always compared Sinagpore and Hong Kong, and I'll always prefer the latter, which is more 'human' to me. Both are commercialised, expensive and crowded but Singapore is too systematic, too clean and too 'English'. Perhaps our generation has grown up under the influence of HK music, movies, drama series, food, game (like Millionaire) etc, that's why we always felt that HK is closer to us as compared to our neighbour Singapore. Visiting HK was like visiting a place I have known for a long time and didnt feel homesick at all. (A bit like coming home though)The food is just like our local food (but more expensive), and the markets and local ... read more

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

What's wrong with "First Aid?" It's got only twenty percent of the syllables and thirty four percent of the letters. Sat in the hot tropical air of a humid Malaysian wet season watching yet another tedious and overly-simplistic training video concentration was hard to come by. The only saving interest were the extremely bad actors, who approached their victims with the same wild staring intensity that Wayne Rooney would an errant linesman - "May I help you?" being bawled out at the same time as slipping on a pair of rubber gloves to avoid 'contact with fluids'. The only sane response to such an 'Emergency Firster' would be to yell 'Keep your hands off me you raving lunatic.' We were in the Perhentian Islands off the North East coast of peninsular Malaysia and we'd come for ... read more

Before going to Lumbini, thanks to our dodgy travel agency in Nepal, we finally got air tickets from Kathmandu to Lukla, gateway to the Everest region. The guys at the agency were so funny. When we used their calculator to figure out how the ticket cost per person and the USD/Nepali rupee exchange rate, it kept giving us the wrong figure. We finally realized those guys rigged the calculator so that it would divide instead of multiply! So if you multiplied $100 by 2, it would total $50 instead. I guess they were trying to make you think the prices were lower than they really were, so that you would buy tickets from them instead of going somewhere else, then hit you up with the difference in “taxes” in the end. When we confronted the travel ... read more

Chiling out in Canton... Finally made it to Guangzhou province where my dad & grandparents are from!! Birds eye view of the place was amazing....Guangzhou is thankfully green, with small lakes, water ways, trees and masses of highrises in the city. As usual the people make it. The best part of this leg of the trip has to be spending time with my Uncle Anthony n Aunt Steffi. I havent seen them in 8 years!!!They are incredible people, and Uncle Anth still leaves me in stiches. Funny how the more I get to know him and about life growing up the more I understand about my mum!! Apparently mum your big brother claims you're not as saintly as you claim to be!! Life is tough here. Anthony & Steffi live in a massive residential complex. ... read more