East Asia

China, Travel Words

Xishuangbanna

XiShuangBanNa After a few months stuck in Shenzhen without a vacation, my Spring Festival/ Chinese New Year vacation found me straight back in Yunnan Province.  Tropical rain-forest bordering Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam.  Home to the upper stretches of the Mekong River (before it becomes the Mekong River.  澜沧江。)  One of the […]

China, Photo Blogs

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge Resting the horses. All through the hike, these guys follow you and ask if you’d like to rent a horse for the rest of the trip. The ringing of the horses’ bells soon becomes part of the background of the walk.     —- Want to visit […]

China, Travel Words

Fujian and Xiamen

After about a month of teaching in Shenzhen came my first vacation: National Day.  Myself and a group of 7 other teachers from CTLC had trouble finding tickets to anywhere we were super excited about going, so instead we headed to where we COULD find tickets: Xiamen.  Fujian province is […]

China, Travel Words

Spending Time in Shenzhen

Spending Time in Shenzhen For the year and a half that I lived in China, Shenzhen was the base of operations.  Shenzhen is very much NOT old China.  In 1979, the city was a small fishing village overlooking the Hong Kong territory from across the bay.  Since 1980, when it […]

HK and Macau

Camping in HK

When you really need to get out of the big city, Hong Kong has plenty of nature as well.  Four long-distance hiking trails cross the Hong Kong S.A.R., totaling over 180 miles.  Some of these cross marvelous beaches and scalable mountains, my favorite of which was the stretch of the […]