This is the second of three posts on traveling in Japan on a budget. Yesterday, I wrote about the overall costs of a Japan trip. Come back tomorrow for part three, on the cost-effectiveness of the Japan Rail Pass.
To be honest, when I began thinking about where I would go this winter, Japan was pretty [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
At Youning Si monastery outside Xining, small temples are perched precariously on the face of a mountain. They seem almost to cling to the rock, as if afraid they could at any moment slip and slide down to the road below. As you ascend from one temple to the next, you leave behind the fresh [...]
I rang in the New Year onboard the train from Nanning, China, to Hanoi, hopefully setting an appropriately adventurous tone for 2010.
The train turned out to be a very easy and economical way to get between the two countries. You can arrive in Nanning (the capital of Guangxi Province) without your Vietnamese visa and be [...]
The Huogongdian (火宫殿) restaurant is one of Changsha’s most famous eateries, but it took me more than a year to find a reason to go there. But on Saturday night, we braved the cold and headed over to the east side of the river to check it out.
We were surprised to find that it is [...]
When I first came to China in 2007, Xi’an’s Terracotta Warriors were the thing I was most excited to see. And by most excited, I mean “jumping up and down squealing from the moment I saw that they were on the itinerary.” I had wanted to visit the site ever since I first read about [...]
Until you’ve lived in China, it’s hard to understand the speed with which everything changes: restaurants, neighborhoods, government regulations, you name it. This is an occupational hazard of travel writing here, since the expiration date on your recommendations can pass in the blink of an eye. You might recommend a neighborhood for shaokao, only to [...]
Changsha, the city where I live and the capital of Hunan, sits on the flat plains of the northwest of the province. But head west, and the plains are eventually replaced by spectacular mountains. Last spring, I visited the karsts of Dehang; this year, I saw their even more beautiful cousins in Zhangjiajie, also known [...]
Ever heard of Lushan? Unless you’re Chinese, probably not. Although the mountains are popular destination for Chinese tourists, they are hardly on the radar for foreign travelers. But on a sunny autumn weekend in late October, I found myself on a bus bound for “Mt. Lu.” One of my fellow teachers is attempting to visit [...]
