I’m pretty sure everyone who knows me in real life is tired of hearing me talk about how wonderful Malaysia is. I first visited in October, for a whirlwind tour of KL, Kota Bharu, the Perhentians and Penang. I had a marvelous time eating street food, snorkeling and learning how to batik. Such a good [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
I know, I know, you’ve had enough of Guangxi. And I promise, this is it for awhile. But if Wednesday’s rave review wasn’t enough to convince to add a stop in Dazhai to your trip to Guilin, these photos should do the trick. As we walked through the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces, it was hard [...]
Yes, that Taj Mahal is insanely beautiful. You’re not too cool to go there, and you definitely should. But before you leave Delhi for Agra, be sure to visit Humayun’s Tomb as a sort of prequel to the Taj itself. The building of Humayun’s Tomb preceded the Taj by 50+ years and initiated a new [...]
Last month, I spent most of a short work-related trip to Hong Kong in bed, sick with what might have been swine flu. But happily, I recovered in time for a final “mystery activity,” which turned out to be a private tram tour of Hong Kong. Trams have been ferrying passengers around the city since [...]
Just added: Guides to Jiayuguan and Dunhuang, Gansu Province
In between Lanzhou and Dunhuang sits the small town of Jiayuguan, which was once the westernmost outpost of the Chinese empire. Centuries ago, a huge fort marked the end of the Great Wall and the beginning of barbarian lands. Today, China’s reach extends much farther west to [...]
Langmusi, a tiny Tibetan town along the Gansu-Sichuan border, initially seems like an unlikely draw for tourists both Western and Chinese. It’s not much more than a one-street town, with a couple of small monasteries. But it is a terrific jumping-off point for explorations of Tibetan nomad culture in the mountains around town. An enterprising [...]
