East Asia

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Arriving at the Big Smoke … make that the Biggest Smoke

Above:  Waiting to leave my hometown Kuching. I left Kuching at a civilised time of 1040 for Tokyo via Kuala Lumpur on AirAsia and then AirAsia X. The two hour transit in KL gave me enough time to fit in a quick light lunch at the lounge before boarding the flight to Tokyo, the world’s […]

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Diving and day on the water

It’s not easy to find other people to dive with, in Biak.  I was lucky to be able to join a party of dive journalists and dive the fabulous Wundi Cave.  You can read about my day here where you’ll also find tips on trying to make a dive-trip happen. Packing that night, I thought I […]

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Urban pleasures of Hong Kong

As our departure to Auckland was 1920 in the evening, we didn’t need to leave the city till 1530.  That meant we had time for picking up a few bargains from the shops around Wan Chai and having a long massage.  We didn’t set out to buy anything but there are too many quality items […]

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Japanese germ warfare

This morning, we had better luck with taxis getting the Japanese Germ Warfare Experimental Base, which was in the south side of Harbin city. The ride took about 45 minutes and upon reaching there, we decided to get the taxi driver to wait and keep the meter running; it wasn’t the kind of place we […]

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Siberian tigers

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 […]

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Ice & Snow World

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 […]

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International Snow Sculpture Art Expo

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 […]

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Flying to the Harbin Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival

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 […]

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Killing time before flying to India

Killing time I slept till 0700 and did some admin on the computer till 1000 when I had brunch of fishball kwayteow soup. Uniqlo beckoned again and I went to their flagship store next to Times Square which was impressive even before their expansion slated for next week. That killed half a day and I […]

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Hong Kong nightstop #1

Immigration was a breeze today. It always seems to be the case when I need to kill time and when the queues are shocking, I have a tight self-connect to make. I took the A21 bus into Mong Kok and was at the Lucky Hostel by 0730 waking up the manager from bed. I was […]

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