Mark arrived from Beijing last night after a 2 hour delay. We only bad a brief chat then, so I had a better catch up with him over breakfast. We had planned on going to the Siberian Tiger Park and there was no reason to change the plan. The hotel taxi drivers were around and […]

As if to repeat yesterday morning, we explored our neighbourhood to start off the day. We found the old Jewish area where Jews from Russia and Europe settled to escape persecution. We didn’t have many things we wanted to do today, as we planned on saving some activities for when Mark (a friend living in […]

The sun rose around 0700 but we didn’t rush to get out of bed. After a simple hotel buffet breakfast, we wandered around the old part of Harbin a little. The weather was cold, clear and crisp.  We found the walking street which was only 2 streets away. What we needed was a scarf and […]

Kim, being on NZ time woke up about 0400. As we had retired about 2200 last night, I more-or-less had enough sleep too. We chatted and got ready around 0600 and left the hotel at 0645 to find the E21 bus just outside the hotel; perfect timing! We arrived at the airport just less than […]

Above: Gentrified hutong area of Beijing known as Nanluoguxiang. Final exploration My last day in China today. I fly out at 2355 bound for Dubai and continuing to Karachi. I walked to a gentrified hutong area known as Nanluoguxiang. It was quite nice and shaded by willows as it was a 37degC day. Most shops […]

At breakfast I met my fellow-countrymen.  Funny that in China and when I travel, I’m normally unmistakably ethnically Chinese.  But for other Malaysians on the road, I’m usually of Malayo-Polynesian extract … being Iban, Bidayuh or even Malay. As I’ve been in Beijing a couple of times, I had done most of the sights before […]

Above:  Traffic jam in the hutong of Beijing. I had an early wake up to take the 0740 train from Pingyao to Taiyuan only to find that the train had been delayed by 30 minutes.  It was the first delay I’ve encountered.  The 1h30 hard sleeper was warm. It was interesting listening to people talk […]

I booked a day trip with the hostel last night for this morning. My back and hip doesn’t feel too good; an after-effect of an injury from earlier in the year. The excursion consisted of a shared minivan to a couple of sights rather far away from Pingyao (otherwise necessitating trains and taxis). First stop […]