Some countries shut down when they have national holidays. It used to be the case in New Zealand when for the period between Christmas and New Year's and then for the first week or so of January, everyone was on holiday. Similarly in Europe, some countries shut down offices, factories and government departments for a summer break of one or two w...

Monday myself, Maeve and Clare were planning to go to the Vietnamese embassy to get our visa. This was much easier said than done, asking for directions proved to be very difficult although by trial and error the best people to ask are in business suits. They rang the embassy and told us exactly where it is. The only problem when we got the...

Beijing This is a city of 16 million with many contrasts. On one hand, it is very modern, with wide streets, bike lanes for the 20 million bikes, interesting architecture, and beautiful gardens and boulevards. (30 million trees have been planted in Beijing since 1955.) On the other hand, there are still 2 million poor people living in the ancien...

Gary departure experience: My turn to focus on wrapping up everything and pack for 8 weeks. I had a business to prepare for my absence, a house to straighten and prep, vacation funds to acquire and plan for and luggage to load. Only sounds like 4 things but within every task were a million microtasks! I felt like I was in the twilight zone the w...

What a day! We visited some incredible places today. We woke up to some light flurries as we prepared for our day. As we get on the tour bus we realise that today is going to be one heck of a day. We head over to The Forbidden City and spend the entire time absorbing every little detail that we could. Yes, we took some photos, actually a lot of ...

Whos idea was it to sleep on the great wall? not just the great wall but the wild section of the great wall? adam, kelly and i one date decided that we wanted to spend a night up on the great wall. we bought sleepin bags, a tent, and backpacks and traveled about 2 hours north of beijing to a resevoir called yellow flour resovoir. the wall there ...

Bit of a wipe out day. Flew Dragonair to Beijing to start my 3-week tour. Flight fine and watched you, me and dupree" - disconcertingly entertaining. Landed no probs and spent about an hour getting through the largest queue for passport control known to man - the only queue visible from space, I'm sure. Picked up no probs from airport, with anot...

3(?) hour flight from Hong Kong to Beijing. Arrived late at night, avoided the crowd of touts offering very poor value taxi services in the arrivals area, and took a taxi from the rank. Usefully, there are people given the job of ushering tourists into taxi's and translating destinations into Chinese for the taxi drivers. Unfortunately, it seems...

This is the first entry in my travelblog,although i created 5 travelogues already. After my graduation and a few days busy working,i said to myself: baidi,you cant just let this blog laying into ruins!" well,could i let this "Back Lake Trip" to be the first volunteer,if it doesnt mind... First Impression--still water,traditional bungalow and "Hu...

Happy Wednesday! Well it is Wednesday for us anyway! Before I forget, here is a quick message for Kathryn. Kathryn, I have been combing this country for tights, cannot find any small enough, can you help? I have also discovered that those little underwear shirts are really useful. I need more, two were not enough. Alright. For those of you (MICH...