On my October trip to Malaysia, we had scheduled a mere 24 hours in Kuala Lumpur — hardly enough time to get one’s bearings, much less see all that the city has to offer. So we had to pick and choose. We skipped a few of the biggest attractions, including the Petronas Towers. (Vertigo makes [...]
Each morning, Malaysia’s kopitiams — coffee shops — are abuzz with clinking cups, rustling newspapers and the hum of voices speaking Malaysian and Chinese. Just one or two ringgit buys a small mug of rich, strong kopi, which comes with a healthy dose of condensed milk. (If you don’t want the milk, ask for a [...]
In the late 1860s, a poor teenager from Guangdong Province named Cheong Fatt Tze fled the Opium Wars and escaped to Dutch-controlled Jakarta, then called Batavia. From his beginnings in a sundries shop, he grew into the head of a major trading company with stores across southeast Asia. One of those stores was in Penang, [...]
Questions about train travel drive a relatively large portion of this site’s traffic, according to Google Analytics, and a recent perusal of search terms suggests that the topic deserves another look.
My guide to train travel in China is a good place to start for answers to your basic questions. Look there for answers to:
How do [...]
I’m back in China now, having swapped kuai for the last few ringgits in my wallet and registered my return with the Public Security Bureau. I certainly wish I were still in Malaysia, a country that I loved. In the days to come, look out for stories of my new Malaysian crushes: double-fried pork, rainbow-colored [...]
This is the fifth and final post of a weeklong series recapping my August trip to the western Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. See the first, second, third and fourth posts in the series.
When I think back on the two weeks we spent in Gansu and Qinghai, the food and the funny-frustrating stories are [...]
This is the fourth post of a weeklong series recapping my August trip to the western Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. See the first, second and third posts in the series.
Maybe all these posts about western China have got you thinking about a trip to the region. But how much will it cost?
Well, the [...]
This is the third post of a weeklong series recapping my August trip to the western Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. See the first and second posts in the series.
Many of the foods we encountered in western China bore little, if any, resemblance to what one thinks of as “Chinese food”. Yes, we ate [...]
This is the second post of a weeklong series recapping my August trip to the western Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. See the first post in the series here.
Our taxi clung to the gravel road as it ascended from switchback to switchback with uncomfortable speed. It felt as if we were climbing into the [...]
This is the first post of a weeklong series recapping my August trip to the western Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai.
Only a month after getting back to Changsha, I have finally finished updating the site to include everything from my August trip to western China. In celebration, a week (!) of posts recapping the [...]
