Warning This post contains some graphic images. If blood makes you queasy, you may want to skip it. I’ve mentioned a few times how, although I do travel mostly without plans, I also do so […]
The Mega Trip Part 9 (The Great Wall)
With the land-based portion of my adventure through China nearly over, I realized that I was still missing a significant piece of what I wanted to see before returning to Japan. Kung Fu. So, after […]
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to announce that this post officially marks the first time in almost two years that I’m actually writing about the country I’m in! Welcome, at long last, to Cambodia 😀
You know how I’m always seeking out new and interesting experiences? Well last weekend I went drift racing. One of my coworkers, Miki, is extremely into cars. He has a Limited Edition Impreza (one of […]
Somewhere around six months ago, I was sitting in my apartment talking on the phone with my mom. From just outside my window I could hear Buddhist monks chanting at Ninnaji, an enormous wooden temple […]
The following is not actually a single narrative of one continuous evening, but a composite of many. It’s written as a representative summary of my average night out in Kyoto. Nothing is exaggerated. It’s Saturday […]
Back in September, I spent a good few hours researching and plotting a full route through SouthEast Asia (described here). After hopping from Japan to Korea to China, it would’ve taken me down through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and into Thailand – just in time for Songkran, the Thai New Year celebration. Continue reading »
Ever hear of “cormorant fishing”?
It’s pretty interesting.
Basically, you get the birds to do all the work for you 😆
Step 1) Tie together some bamboo logs to form a raft, and rig up a floodlight to some kind of generator.
Step 2) Secure a fleet of cormorants.
Continue reading »
You may have noticed that during this entire trip – since leaving California in August – I’ve been staying exclusively in major cities. Kyoto/Osaka, Busan, Seoul, Shijiazhuang, Xi’an, Beijing, Hong Kong, and then Guangzhou. All major population centers of one million or more.
Finally, the trend has been broken.
I’m writing to you now (I really am – the posts are officially back up to realtime!) from the riverbank of the Li River an hour outside of Guilin – in Guangxi province, China.
When I decided to take the leap and buy a last minute plane ticket from Guangzhou to Guilin, I was really wondering if I’d made the right decision. I’d finally found a nice, comfortable, (comparatively) inexpensive spot where I could apparently work in relative peace. Why the hell would I leave so quickly?
Because every single person I talked to – without exception – assured me that I’d be in store for bigger and better things.
And wow, am I ever glad I took the plunge. This place really is just magnificent:
Continue reading »
Guangzhou, known to many in the West as Canton, is a city of a “mere” 3.5 million residents – less than half the population of Shijiazhuang – yet it’s one of the most important cities in China and the first that many travelers visit on their arrival. Its position on the Pearl River provided it the opportunity to become one of China’s earliest points of contact with the outside world, and it’s remained a massive trade port for the more than one thousand years since.
I have to admit – I was pretty interested to see what it had to offer. Continue reading »
When I first mentioned my plans for visiting Hong Kong to Andy, a veteran of life in the Middle Kingdom, he told me that I was in for an interesting surprise. He said that the moment I stepped across the border from China I’d be absolutely blown away by the level of difference. I imagined it might be something like the Taba border crossing between Egypt and Israel – where in many ways, it felt like a huge relief to take just a few steps and suddenly become free of the need to scrutinize every transaction’s validity and to ward off a constant stream of touts.
Yet, when I finally did make the crossing into Hong Kong’s territories I was surprised to find that the change didn’t really feel all that drastic at all. I mean sure, it was different…but not that different. Certainly less different than going from San Diego to Mexico, something both Andy and I had done plenty of times during our college years at UCSD.
This was not true, however, when crossing back from Hong Kong into China. Continue reading »
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