China

Our final stop of the day was the Silk Alley market. Our guidebook described it as a tourist trap outside market. What we found was different – an indoor multi-level market.…

Summer PalaceThe next day, we took a taxi to the Summer Palace outside the city. It’s a huge site, and would take most of a day to cover. Unfortunately, we only had a couple of hours.…

BeijingOperaNext up on our whirlwind tour was the Chinese Opera. We returned to Qianmen by metro (so fast. Forget taking a taxi in Beijing during rush hour, which appeared to be most of the day!).…

princegongs2We returned to Beijing, and visited Prince Gong’s Mansion. Although quite picturesque, it was packed with tourists, which made it hard to enjoy (and get good photos of!). There’s some tourist trap thing where you can pay to get in to a building and drink tea an

After flying in from San Francisco, finding our hotel and checking out the bird market, we wandered down and around Nathan St. back towards our hotel, picking up a large plastic box to ship our new birdcage home in.…

Terracotta WarriorsTerracotta Warriors In the morning, we headed out to the star attraction of Xi’an, the Terracotta Warriors. A bus leaves from right outside the hotel and took us directly there, comfortably.…

Early the next morning, we took the subway (couldn’t have been easier!) to the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden, where old men walk their birds and socialize. We bought a bird cage, and set off to explore the flower market.…

Cosmic Guesthouse hotel room - you could just about touch both walls at the same time! Almost all backpackers stay in either the Mirador Mansion, or the Chung King Mansion. These ‘mansions’ are in fact just large buildings, with various floors owned by different guesthouse

See our Hong Kong slideshowHong Kong Skyline from the Walk of the Stars We flew from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Our experience as we arrived in Hong Kong couldn’t have been better.…