We've made it to Hong Kong finally, now under Chinese control but still a "special administrative region," which means no 'net filtering software! :) So I'm actually posting to my blog for the first time in two months ( Read more... )

Do we left Kunming yesterday on the way to visit a friend from Mut Mee who

is now living an hour south of Guilin in Yangzhou. On the way, we stopped in

Shilin to see a stone forest there. There are a couple of "forests" in that

area, including the actual Shilin Stone Forest about 5km from the train

station...which apparently costs 140 yuan (about $ ( Read more... )

A brief interlude and rant, if you'll bear with me.

We just arrived in Guilin, and were desperate for food after a busy day

yesterday and a night on the train. We stopped in a small restaraunt here

and I was fairly intent on trying the "lobster" for 25 yuan (just over $3).

Of course, it was not lobster; it was crawfish, and obviously Chinese

( Read more... )

Sorry, but of course I haven't been able to read your blog. If you're

getting ready for exams, good luck! If they just finished, I hope all went

well. But I've been really curious to know how your second semester went.

Have things gotten better at university? Did you decide to definitely

transfer? Do me a favour and drop me a quick comment, just to ( Read more... )

-- It's sort of weird being in a country where the socially responsible

thing to do after drinking a bottle of Coke is to drop the bottle on the

street instead of throwing it in a bin. This was especially noticable in

Jinghong, the first real city we stopped in, but has been true everywhere

we've gone in China. They are serious about recycling here ( Read more... )

So we did finally get to see the cliff with 2400 Buddhas in Jiajiang. It was

kind of cool: lots of carved out niches with very old carvings in them of

Buddhas and various scenes from the Buddha's life. The only problem is that

95% of them were missing heads; there would be a decapitated body with a

square hole reaching into the rock where the head ( Read more... )

And finally we're up to the present! We headed south a couple of hours to

Jiajiang, which seems not particularly notable except that it had a cliff

with 2400 Buddhas arranged on it.Should be cool to see...but we haven't

quite made it yet. Today it is storming, and the last two days...well, we

just haven't quite made it yet. But we found a hotel we ( Read more... )

After finally getting our tails in gear to leave Lijiang (the guest house

said they were completely booked with reservations and our room wouldno

longer be available, so we had to find /somewhere/ else to sleep), we headed

east to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan (Sezchuan) province. To get there,

we managed to squeeze a 16 hour sleeper bus ride ( Read more... )

Heading further north, we made it to Lijiang -- another former capital of

something or other. Whereas Dali struck me as Disney World, Lijiang gave me

the impression of a cross between Venice and Bourbon St. It was another town

with lots of people in "traditional" garb, especially outside the various

bars/restaraunts where the staff would sing and ( Read more... )

There was one night at Tang Dynasty where some particularly drunk or drugged individual was /forcibly/ removed from the club. I don't know what had actually started it, but the bouncers and every other male member of the staff proceeded to kick the shit out of this guy, who insanely kept stumbling to his feet and trying to charge back into the door ( Read more... )