I took a bus from Zhaoqing to the Shenzhen border for my return to Hong Kong. As I got off the bus, a guy comes up to me and asks if I am going to Hong Kong, and if he can help me with my bag. I was so surprised at his earnestness in this proposition (sure, in exchange for helping carry my stuff, why don't you just go ahead and run off with it) that I didn't even laugh until I'd declined. Either I still look like a naive new arrival, or he was having a really slow day.

A couple of people that took me for very settled were these guys looking for a pub in Kowloon later that evening; the streets were filled with drunken Commonwealth subjects after the finale of the Rugby 7s tournament earlier in the day. I like to think they found their way.

Overall, my second stay in Hong Kong was much nicer than the first. I had a wonderful place to stay courtesy of Nicki, a longer time for it, and several people to hang out with, not the least of which was Nicki herself. Oh, and no ear infection this time.

After some wandering in the area I knew (the lovely Kowloon), I spent some more time in Hong Kong proper, the downtown area and such. Errands were done, many ties were bought . . .

The fun was had in the evenings. I ended up spending a few of these with some French friends of Nicki's. Great people, showed me a few of the places to go out in HK, and I even made it out for a tasty French dining experience: cassoulet (so much duck, so much sausage). Oh, and a day trip to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island (I have pictures, really I do). I also had a wonderful dinner with Nicki's parents, aunt and uncle and grandmother.

So, after shipping another 10kg of stuff back to Canada (by sea, the predicted arrival should be well after I am back), I was ready to say my goodbyes and fly South.

Zhaoqing would be my final stop before the Chinese government wanted me out of the country. While there are supposedly nicer areas further inland (I have this on good authority), the weather in all of Eastern China was looking to be gloomy and rainy right up until my visa ran out, so I figured I would pick the warmest place.

There were some decent sights, including a nearby mountain (Dinghu) for hiking where there is a super-high concentration of negative ions in the air (supposedly good for one's health). I wouldn't recommend much more than a weekend here, but that was all I had anyway, and 18C with drizzle was much nicer than 10C with drizzle, so my plan worked. Oh, and if you are interested in one of those places where you don't see any other foreigners out walking around, this is one such place (I didn't see any other tourists . . . but got lots of stares).

I also had the good fortune to meet up for dinner with Diana, also a UBC grad, who as it turns out knows a lot of people I know (Andrew got me her contact info). In fact, she is an antiflux person as well, which I found out right as we were saying goodbye. I was wondering when I would run into somebody like that, but wasn't expecting it to be in China. Anyway, she was much better at picking restaurants than I, and also introduced me to the massage place she likes. As it turns out, I am a poor candidate for massage, as I find any beneficial probing of nerves and tendons to be pretty painful. Maybe I just need more practice?

It turned out to be a fun first weekend in Shanghai. Nicki and Henning both made it down from Beijing, I got in by train from Xian, and we met up with our "locals", notorious antifluxor Andrew and my cousin Rob who is teaching English there. Maoming Lu is a street of bars that attracts foreigners of all stripes. It's a weird crowd; career expats who are very settled in the local scene and its available services (Andrew likes the term "sexpats"), many touristy-looking people like me who don't know what's going on, and the a fair number of young professionals who have found themselves in this city with its tradition of flair and vice.

Rob introduced me to the street food near his house. These are little stalls or just carts where people are cooking various kinds of food, mostly involving a lot of oil and frying. There are some tasty items and you can fill yourself for under a dollar, but something I ate did not go over so well on the second day.

Xian was the capital of China for a couple thousand years, back in the day. It's the location of many historical sites, including the famous army of terra-cotta warriors, a life-sized army of statues buried to protect a former powerful emporer after his death. The nearby mausoleum is buried under a huge hill (the project took some 700,000 workers) and is trapped well enough that it is still sealed as archeologists figure out a way in that won't destroy everything.

While I saw a few other foreigners near where I was staying, this city was basically all Chinese people all the time. Some people would talk about you right in front of your face (you get used to hearing the word "laowai", meaning foreigner, pretty quickly), some will just stare, or others will yell a friendly or a solicitous "hello!" which I had to learn quickly to ignore if I wanted to walk anywhere.

The historical aspects of the city and its environs were pretty interesting, and I'm glad I made this detour. I wouldn't make it a first or absolutely necessary stop if you are going to be in China for a short time (definitely see Beijing, I would say), but if you are going to see a few places this is probably a good one to include.

If you want to see what there is to see, be a bit careful; the local tour guides know the public bus that is supposed to go out of town, and use this buses number on their own private bus. I ended up on such a bus via my hotel (a decision I made a little early in the morning after a long night train). We waited around for over an hour for more people to join the tour, but all that happened was the police came by and seized what was apparently the illegal sign they were using to advertise their tour in front of the bus. I was finally ready to just walk away, and started demanding my money back through my interpreter (one of the drivers who spoke a little bit of English). A small crowd gathered with my continued repeating of "buyao" ("don't want"), but they finally convinced me to get on the bus.

We left right away, and I then discovered that all the people on the bus were just getting a ride across town except for myself and one Chinese lady from Hangzhou. So they put us in a taxi and we got a private car for our adventure. We got along very well - especially considering her English was as good as my Chinese - and with only the two of us we didn't spend much time in the requisite shopping stops.

As a final note, the hotel I stayed in was decent for the money, though it was in the seedy train station area and came complete with a 1am call (Lonely Planet even mentions these) from a local working girl offering services. I missed the call because I thought it was my alarm and was trying to shut it off, but I did hear the ringing in the next room, then the next, and so on down the hall.

Hello again. I have had an excellent week and a half in Beijing. Highlights:

The food. We've gone out to eat every night (not that there is a kitchen available), and all the meals have been very tasty. Various kinds of dumplings, spicy chicken/peanut/chili pepper concoctions, fried rack of lamb, sweet and sour fish (I thought it was more like honey garlic, but anyway this might be my favourite), lots of other fish, it goes on. Probably the most out-of-the-ordinary dish (for me) that I've eaten is pig skin, both in dumplings (a little better) or served cold (sort of pickled?) with vegetables as an appetizer (not so great, even before I knew what it was). Of course, there are things I've eaten where I didn't know what they were, but they were good enough that I didn't want to spoil it by finding out . . .

The Great Wall. The tour I ended up on with Henning, a German friend of Nicki's who also happens to be visiting China at this time, was kind of bogus. We spent most of the 10 hours on detours, including a tour a big jade factory (the largest in Asia, we are told, and it was kind of cool) and a Chinese medicine academy (turns out I need to exercise more and eat fewer fatty foods - thanks, so do 95% of North Americans). But the Wall itself is spectacular, even at the touristy section we visited (it is winter, so not as crowded anyway).

The Forbidden City. It is kind of cool to stroll along the walkways that used to be reserved for emporers. Yes, I feel like a big man now.

The Summer Palace. Huge, though mostly outdoors, which is what all these palaces are like. It made for an interesting walk around, though I hear it is better in spring and (you guessed it) summer. There are buds on the trees, so I guess this is not far off, but it is a bit late for me. Next time, I guess.

Day trip to Tianjin. This port near Beijing is famous for its antique markets. It was formerly under European control, and there is a section of town that is a mishmash of various European styles - it was very weird to drive around there and feel like you'd suddenly dropped out of China.

Pictures to follow from all of these, someday, hopefully in 2004 .. . .

Nicki and I have been getting along famously as roommates. Of course this tends to be easier when only one person is busy with school and the other is, well, sleeping in and lazing around a lot. I even have my own key (the keys are not copy-protected like those of UBC res). She has school every morning during the week, and one morning we discovered an interesting feature of the door to the room. You can set the lock so that it catches when you close the door, or you can close the door and use your key from the outside. One would expect these to have the same results, but the designers of this door had something a little more sinister in mind: Nicki locked the door from the outside on her way to class, and when I finally dragged myself out of bed, I found that there would be no unlocking the door for me. Fortunately she is not gone all day, and I got out a couple hours later (I was imprisoned with food, tv that has a french channel, and books, so it could have been worse). I'm not clear if such locks are university policy, but I am sticking to my plan of not asking questions.

I've got an overnight train ticket for Xian (about 1000km southwest) that leaves tomorrow. I'll have some time there to check out the renowned terracotta army and other sights before heading to Shanghai for next weekend.

When I left Canada, I had no particular intention of visiting China on this trip, though it's been a vague interest since I took that intro Mandarin course in high school. Things cropped up to the point where I decided I really had to go.

For one, I now have people to visit. Nicki is improving her Mandarin in Beijing this month, and I have a cousin teaching English in Shanghai. Secondly, it turns out it is really easy to go to China from Hong Kong (this is not really any kind of secret, but hey, what do I know). And finally, I have had it recommended by people I've met along the way. So hey, I'm sold and I'm here.

Nicki has been kind enough to extend an offer of sneaking into her dorm room (it has two beds, but she's renting the whole thing) at the university where she is studying. All I had to do was get there from the airport.

If you are looking for a big country where your English won't get you far, China is a good one to try. After shrugging off expensive taxi offers at the airport (of course this was only interpreted as driving a hard bargain, but I exasperated them enough eventually), I gestured and drew on my dozen-word Mandarin vocabulary at the outdoor kiosks to secure a spot on an airport shuttle to (probably) downtown Beijing.

In the end, my life was made simple by a very friendly gentleman who happened to be in the seat beside me on the bus. Apart from speaking pretty decent English, he let me call a worried Nicki ("Where are you?" "On a bus . . . " "WHAT?!?") and wrote down the name of the place in Chinese characters for use in a taxi. Even this wasn't too necessary as he went the extra nice step and talked to a cab driver for me. In the end, I made it to the university for a fraction of the price of an airport cab (and really, Thailand has made me tired of bargaining, in particular for transportation - I just want a price up front).

Hong Kong is crazy. It's a big city, lots of people, and with none of the usual sign restrictions you might be used to; signs are hanging over you anywhere in the road, blocking each other, fighting to be seen. Most of them are neon, so this goes on all through the night.

I settled in at a guesthouse in Mirador Arcade, one of the big building complexes on the south end of Nathan Road (the Golden Mile, though I didn't hear anybody call it that). You may also have heard of Chungking Mansion; Nicki had, in terms of "don't walk around there at night". Mirador is basically next door.

Giddy with the excitement of a new country, and wanting some quieter space to myself on accout of a blossoming ear infection, I got a private room with my own bathroom (well, shower, no bath), where all the fixtures fit into, I'm not kidding, a square metre of floor space (I mean wall to wall, not excluding the toilet for example).

Wandering around, especially in this area, is an exercise is dodging touts and other solicitations. These are only a select few types. The dominant group would be those trying to get you into a tailors shop, of which there are a very many. Around Chungking at around dinnertime, you may be swarmed with brochures and membership cards to any number of Indian restaurants. At any time of day, there are men who will quietly (not too quietly, though) ask if you are interested in a watch; some say "watch?", some "Rolex?" and some the more straightforward "fake watch?". You will, so I am told by the vendors themselves, be assured of a good price on any of these items. My strategy next time will be either to wear a shirt proclaiming "NO TAILOR. NO WATCH. NO FOOD. Thank you." or the more provocative "I have SARS."

Last, but surely not least, as I learned on the first night (I forgot to change my clock from Thailand, so I was unknowingly out after 11pm looking for a snack), are a number of ladies of the evening, dressed for the most part in what I thought were pretty normal clothing (as opposed to, say, Their North American counterparts in such a section of town), which is what threw me off at first (my train of thought being, hey, that was a friendly person saying hi, oh hey, another one . . . and they are women . . . standing around . . . and it's kind of late . . . oh, ok, got it). Hey, give me a break, I'd had an early start in Bangkok that morning. Somehow I found my way to a food stand that sold me a skewer of tasty friend squid, a filling dinner on my reduced appetite.

Speaking of poor judgement, I was sucked in by one of the tailor shops. I had some pretty decent clothes made at reasonable (though I suspect, by HK standards, somewhat extortionate) prices. I blame my aquiescence at least in part on the drugs I was taking; I'd found a doctor by now for my feels-like-the-side-of-my-face-is-exploding ear infection.

I spent a lot of time in bed during the week, feeling a bit out of it courtesy of the pain killers. I certainly settled in early for the night, but my closet/room did have a tv. I caught up a bit on news and saw a particularly chilling British documentary on North Korea.

The tasks I did accomplish involved my impending trip to China. The plan was to get a visa and some kind of transportation up North, and that's just what I did. The PRC was kind enough to grant me a 30-day visa after a couple of days of taking care of my passport for me, and Nicki's friendly travel agent was able to dig up a pretty cheap flight to Beijing for the weekend.

Here I am, after one night in Bangkok. We arrived at 6am yesterday morning, and after a brief nap at one grungier guest house, Bryce and I moved into more respectable digs elsewhere on Khao San Road.

I have two more nights here, and them fly out to Hong Kong. Once the Chinese government lets me in, the plan is to head up to Beijing to check in on Nicki and see how her Mandarin is coming along.

Incidentally, this is what you might have opened your door to yesterday if you lived in Halifax:

I'm not sure what the temperature is here, but the air con system in my room claims that it is a chilly 25C inside.

Well, we are heading up the island for the next week or so, including a trip out to Bottle Beach. I think I've written back pretty much everybody who sent along birthday greetings, so I won't miss the internet time too much. I've also caught up on quite a few of the latest seanbaby ramblings (Bryce now celebrates his compleat works).

We've decided at this point that we will be departing illegally from Thailand when we go. They have a system where you pay a fine if your visa expires, which is cheaper than renewing it if you only go over by a few days. I'm just hoping the paperwork will be manageable so that I don't miss my flight to Hong Kong on the 23rd.

The full moon party was a great time. The same beach where Bryce and I have already spent several evenings visiting the bars was almost a whole new place. The huge moon glistening on the bay was a nice effect, but of course the main difference would be the thousands of people crowding the beach.

Bryce has pictures . . . basically we walked around, met people, drank, sat around, some dancing. It's a party, what do you expect. We stayed as long as possible until Bryce crapped out around 5am (which I only write since he seems to need to make a big deal about such things).

After the birthday festivities in Phuket and snorkeling tour on the islands, Bryce and I are back on the island of Phangan. We've been taking it easy and catching up with people back home a bit. I've gotten to a lot of email in the last few days, and even written up some of my notes from December.

I brought two bottles of French wine with me to Thailand, bought on my last day in Paris. I finally had the second one, the last I will have for some time, on our camping trip to the Similan Islands. It was a little warm, nobody else wanted any, but I finished the bottle in relatively short order. I don't know what sort of long term effects I will feel from cutting off my half-bottle-or-more-a-day routine, but my guess is they will be beneficial. Sigh.

Tonight will be my first full moon party; Koh Phangan is famous for them.

The Similan Islands are a chain of islands classified as a national park off the West Coast of Thailand (Phuket is the closest city). It takes about an hour and a half to get there by speedboat. On the way there, our host was kind enough to supply anti-nausea pills as we were basically out in open water for the whole trip (and this was a calm day; apparently they couldn't even go out the few previous days due to rough weather). We saw some whales, which led to some poor photographs of shapes in water, but Bryce managed a video that turned out pretty well.

Our trip was 3 days/2 nights and the primary activity was snorkeling. I've never been snorkeling before, but this was an amazing introduction. Even before arriving at the camp site, we squeezed in some snorkeling off the speed boat. I haven't been in salt water for a while, but it didn't really remind me of BC's ocean anyway: the water is too clear and too warm for that.

After having some lunch and finding our tents, it was back out on the boat for more snorkeling. The second spot was where I discovered (with Bryce's warning) the little jellyfish and/or jellyfish eggs that sting you as you go along. They aren't bad even though the sting lasts for several minutes. I fared much worse on land with the many mosquitoes and other bugs that attacked at sunset when we returned.

The middle day had meals on the boat (all seafood, really good meals all included in the trip, but too bad for Bryce who can't stand the stuff) and lots of snorkeling. By the end, I had seen all kinds of fish, huge schools of them. Very impressive. And I was exhausted. Not surprising, as I have been on a regular drinking schedule as opposed to any kind of exercise schedule for the past month(s). I also managed to develop quite a sun burn, which I guess was bound to happen here at some point, so time to get it over with.

By the trip home on the third day, I was pretty wiped after all the sun and swimming. The tents had not been the ultimate for sleeping (it rained the second night, water getting into the tents, plus partying nearby late into the night), so it was a real treat to reclaim our air-con room in Phuket. Anyway, I would recommend this trip if you are in or near Phuket, as the snorkeling (and maybe the diving, people were up to that as well) are really something to see. You might want to try the 2 day/1 night, though, and if things are going well they might offer a cheap extension of a night or two while you are out there (they did for us, anyway).

After a long flight from France to Malaysia, a short flight from Malaysia to Thailand, a long bus ride from the West to the East coast of Thailand, and an overnight ferry, I am now comfortable installed on Koh Phangan with Bryce, whom I have torn away from a life of pampered service (massages included) in the Phillipines to come hang out with me. Thus begins what is in some sense Phase 2 of this trip, the stopover in Kuala Lumpur/SE Asia.

I've spent about the last month having a great time traveling with my sister Laura. I know I haven't updated this thing in a while, but I have been jotting notes to help jog my memory, and it looks like I will be able to catch up a bit while I am here. I might even get some more pictures up. No, really, I mean it this time . . .

After a long flight from France to Malaysia, a short flight from Malaysia to Thailand, a long bus ride from the West to the East coast of Thailand, and an overnight ferry, I am now comfortable installed on Koh Phangan with Bryce, whom I have torn away from a life of pampered service (massages included) in the Phillipines to come hang out with me. Thus begins what is in some sense Phase 2 of this trip, the stopover in Kuala Lumpur/SE Asia.

I've spent about the last month having a great time traveling with my sister Laura. I know I haven't updated this thing in a while, but I have been jotting notes to help jog my memory, and it looks like I will be able to catch up a bit while I am here. I might even get some more pictures up. No, really, I mean it this time . . .