China is huge, so getting roughly to the middle takes a long time. High speed trains are reserved for the east coast so to get to Xi’an we split the trip into two overnight legs. Also, due to the Expo, tickets out of Shanghai are sold out quickly, unless of course you want to stand for 36 hours rather than getting a seat or bed on the train.
China has had multiple capitals and Kaifeng falls on the list of one of the Seven Ancient Capitals. But, like most other …

An inspiring article in an in-flight magazine a few months back convinced us to add Shanghai to our list of places to visit this summer. It turns out that the World’s Fair is being held this year, and an event that gave us the ice cream cone and the Eiffel Tower is surely not to be missed. Mike was a little disappointed to learn that the event is not actually called the World’s Fair anymore. Now it is just known as “the Expo”, which sounds a lot less spectacular. Even …

After the commotion of Beijing, we were looking forward to spending a few days somewhere quieter. A sacred mountain and the home town of Confucius were on the way to Shanghai and that sounded like the perfect stop. The town of Tai’an still had plenty of energy and the mountain is a pilgrimage for Chinese people so we didn’t really find the peaceful spot we were looking for. We did get to climb up about 7,000 steps, so it was still a productive day.
We arrived on the bullet train from …

Mike’s birthday, we easily memorized our first full day in China months ago. Without a lot of research and given the convenience from our hostel, we hit up some of the most well known attractions on the first day out. We visited Tiananmen Square and the final resting place of Chairman Mao. Interesting that he is covered with red blanket with the Soviet hammer and sickle. Most of our afternoon was spent inside the Forbidden City. We quickly learned that everything is set up along the cardinal directions, with north …

Even though we were outside of climbing season, we decided to spend a few days in one of the small towns at the base of Fuji-San (Mt Fuji). Kawaguchiko is a small town next to a lake, so we decided to relax and see what we could see before heading back Tokyo. We didn’t have very good luck with the weather and didn’t even get to see the mountain, which was shrouded in fog the entire time we were there. We did get a chance to walk around the lake, …

After spending a week in two big, modern cities, we went to see some of the history of Japan. To do that, we went to another huge city, but this one was different. Kyoto is one of the only major cities to have been spared massive damage during the war; it was also the capital of Japan for about a thousand years. This means the city has an enormous number of old, in tact, and very impressive buildings. The amount of temples and shrines is overwhelming.
Speaking of very old …

Narita International Airport outside of Tokyo was the quietest airport we have ever been in, eerily so. We guessed that we were among the few people actually staying in Japan instead of transiting across the Pacific, but still. There was no line for our baggage, immigration, or customs. We traded in our JR Passes immediately and zoomed into Tokyo, navigated the metro system with ease and made it to our hostel without any complications.
We had planned two days in Tokyo at both the beginning and of our …

Almost 30 years after Heather’s dad visited the Philippines, we ended up staying with the same lovely Puray family in Davao City. We welcomed the change of pace, having real local guidance and an entire house complete with all of it’s amenities.
One of the most interesting things to us was the various different forms of transport. On our first full day out, we rode in four different kinds of vehicles. First, a motorcycle with an attached frame big enough to squeeze in 10 people, plus the driver and usually …

While it’s easy to spend a lot of time drinking beer on the beach, there are other places to see. The next stop was the mountains. We found a nice hotel with a view of some rice fields at the base of a couple volcanoes. It was nice and quiet, sometimes depressingly empty. A couple bus loads of old people showed up one night, but were gone the next day. They were on some sort of organized tour, and judging from the extremely sunburned beer bellies, they probably had spent …

Bali wasn’t on our original list of stops on the tour, this is one the travel agent talked us into. We did a little more research than usual and bought a Lonely Planet Encounter guide. We’d never seen these little guys and figured we give it a try to see if we liked the abbreviated version. From the book, we picked out the little island of Nusa Lembongan and the mountainous region next to the dormant volcano as our main destinations.
Nusa Lembongan is a short ferry ride away, but still …