Update from the road

It's been almost a month since I left Beijing and began journeying south. I'll do my best here to sum up those travels.

Part One: Ich Ben Ein Beijinger

My tour starts and ends in Beijing, and a month ago, that's where my two former high school classmates Brett and Neil met me. Showing them around the first Asian city made me realize two things: I like Beijing, and I know a lot of good Beijing food.

Maybe they're related. I didn't convert quickly to a fan of Chinese food, but after four months of culinary trial and error, I'd compiled a mental list of good restaurants where for delicious, diverse, and authentic Chinese meals. So in between visiting the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the 798 art district. I took them to every delicious hole-in-the-wall eatery that I knew of. And only once in 7 days did we eat at McDonald's.

After that week in Beijing, we took a night train to Shanghai. This is a popular way of getting to and from those cities- trains leave every 7 minutes. It's a 12 hour ride, and my friends and I slept on bunk beds in an air conditioned, 4 person cabin. Even better, it saved us the cost of a night in a hotel. Not bad for half the price of a plane ticket.

In Shanghai, we took a day to explore the famous Bund street, which is a riverside boardwalk lined with old buildings with European style architecture. Visible on the other side of the river are the ultramodern skycrapers of Shanghai's financial district. In the midst of this contrast was the hubbub of thousands of tourists and vendors, this month's sign of the apocalypse went floating by: a giant Samsung boat, which had no windows, no cargo, and no passengers, just a 100 foot long, 30 foot tall "Samsung" sign.

To take a break from Shanghai's breakneck pace, my friends and I took trips to placid Hangzhou and Suzhou. Those two cities, reknowned as China's most beautiful, are only a few hours away from Shanghai. Hangzhou is famous for its West Lake, whose surrounding gardens and treelined boulevards are so idyllic that it seems more like a Florida resort town than China. Suzhou is known as China's Venice- even thouggh there's only one tiny section built on water. However, the most interesting (and risky) part was this: we all rented bikes and exploring Suzhou through the eyes of one of the many moped-driving or bike-riding citizens.

After exploring those two cities, we returned to Shanghai on May 14th, and as we boarded a flight to Bangkok, I said goodbye to China for two weeks.

Part Two: "Sorry guys, I don't speak Thai." - Thailand

I'm getting on the plane from Hong Kong to Guilin... look forward to finishing this post from the hotel tonight