After two weeks of all cities, all the time, it was a bit of a relief to arrive in Takayama, a small town* in the Japanese Alps. We’d seen Japan’s hypermodern side on display in Tokyo and learned about its 20th century history in Hiroshima. In Takayama, we would get in touch with its rural [...]
Earlier today, I received the following inquiry from another travel blogger via Twitter:
@chinaandbeyond have you got a ny recommendations for a months stay in china. leaving hk nxt week
This got me thinking. A month is long enough that you can really see a range of what China has to offer, but you still have to [...]
Kiyomizu Temple was our first stop in Kyoto, due mostly to its status as a World Heritage Site (I’m traveling with a collector) and its proximity to our hostel. It turned out to be an ideal introduction to the city. Kyoto is famous among tourists for its temples, shrines, and gardens, and quaint streets like [...]
Japan is full of wonderful things, many food-related — among them, okonomiyaki pancakes, conveyor belt sushi and convenience-store food of the highest order. But nothing screamed out to be written about here until last night, when we discovered Kyoto’s truly weird “Sweets Paradise.”
We were trolling the streets of Kyoto in search of something sweet when [...]
The main street where I live in Changsha is ordinarily bustling with restaurants of every (Chinese) description. For lunch every day, we choose between Lanzhou noodles, Sichuan dishes, Dongbei dumplings and countless other variations of Chinese food. I’ve never had to worry about where to find my next meal — until this week!
When I first [...]
Earlier this week, a friend and I took the bus from Luang Prabang in Laos across the border to Kunming, China. Information about the trip is scarce in guidebooks and online, and even in Luang Prabang there is plenty of misinformation. So this post is in the nature of a public service announcement:
There is a [...]
One of Luang Prabang’s most distinctive traits is its superabundance of wats — Buddhist monastery-temples. The wats themselves create the ritual of morning alms, one of the most popular “sights” in the city.
At promptly 6:30 a.m. each day, orange-clad monks leave the wats and process around town to collect alms of sticky rice. The alms-givers [...]
