Asian Attitudes on Foreigners

China, I thought, preferred to keep visitors out; many Southeast Asian countries invited foreigners in, with ambiguous wink and smile; Japan smilingly greeted visitors at the door and appeared to admit them without ever really doing

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China’s Wild West

Knowing Urumqi is no longer the Silk Road oasis stop it once was, its still kind of a shock being greeted by today’s vast urban city of over 2 million. By my rough estimate, arriving here marks the 10,000 km …

Magao Caves

For a day I jumped off the train to visit the Magao Caves near Dunhuang, four hours out of Jiayuguan. The Magao Caves (or Grottoes) consist of 492 chambers carved in the side of a cliff 1700 meters long and …

On the Silk Road

On now out of Mongolia and back across the Chinese border. Spent a night in Hohhot and had a gander at the Indian influenced five-tired Wuta Pagoda, home to the only Mongolian star chart ever found.

Via Lanzhou I took …

Hiking the Great Wall

Perhaps the highlight of Beijing was the 10.5 km Great Wall hike from Jinsaling to Simitai. This was probably the most expensive thing I’ve done as no public transport goes there and I had to hire a car, plus entrance …

Beijing Post-Olympics

With hard sleepers sold out, I opted for the hard seat from Xi’an overnight to Beijing. Wanted to try the comfort of traveling this way to maybe save some cash. The train is the one that runs back and forth …

Terracotta Warriors

Overnight train to Xi’an where an acquaintance, Frank, was waiting with my name on a piece of paper. He’s a very cool guy and ran a large tourism operation during the Olympics composed of college students. Really exceptional host and …

Chengdu Panda Reserve

Starting to run out of time…. So from Lijiang it was 24 lovely hours on a sleeper bus to Chengdu. Actually not that bad, of course surrounded by cute girls hocking spit into bags, little girls throwing up in the …

Lijiang, China

I had to spend a night in Lijiang, my birthday evening, and tried to find a decent place to have a couple of drinks. I found the nightlife contained to a picturesque strip straddling a small canal. The only venues …

Tiger Leaping Gorge

I had to scurry to Tiger Leaping Gorge to do an overnight hike staying in a hostel half way. Extremely nice views on par with some of Nepal I saw, and the weather mostly cooperated this time stopping as I …