I’m an amazing travelling agent, if I do say so myself! I create these masterpieces for each international trip, and they’re among my most prized possessions. I use a composition notebook and put in my itinerary, along with hostel information and directions there from airports/train stations, tours, reservation numbers, everything! They’re dead useful in a crunch, especially when travelling in foreign speaking countries.
For this trip I’ve found translations for each destination, along with the name and address to my hostels in Chinese, so I can just show it to the cab driver. And even though I have a rather intricately planned holiday, I’ve never follow it precisely. It’s more to help out with semantics, like bus or subway info, and to have a record of reservations.
A while back I was talking with a friend about the importance of travelling and I found myself saying that I measure my life by where I’ve been. Not what I do. Not my education. Where I’ve been. And where I’m going. It was a really profound realization, it was obvious I needed to incorporate this full time. And here I am.
So in the spirit of the previous paragraph, to date, these are the countries I’ve travelled to:
Italy – 2 weeks
Greece – 2 months
Mexico – 2 weeks
The Netherlands – 2 weeks
Germany – 1 week
France (Paris) – less than a week
England – 5 weeks
Scotland – 1 week
Ireland – 1 week
N. Ireland – less than a week
S. Korea – 11 months
**TECHNICALLY, I was conceived in Canada, so , just saying...
I’ve also seen quite a bit of the U.S.:
San Francisco
Yellowstone National Park
Denver
San Diego
Las Vegas
Omaha
Oklahoma City
Phoenix
Jackson Hole
The Grand Teton National Park
New York City
Ithica
Berkley
Portland
Zion National Park
Bryce Nation Park
Excalante Staircase
Arches National Park
Washington D.C.
Los Angeles
Cincinnati
If I were to make a list of everywhere else I wanna go, the rest of this blog entry would get rather predictable, so I’ll just say, it’s my goal to travel to all 7 continents by the time I’m 33, so I best get going!
So planning for China, well, it’s definitely been a challenge. First of all, China is huge. It’s as big as the lower 48 states, and I only have 2 weeks to see it all. Secondly, other than humungo cities, I don’t know one part of China from another. How would a foreigner know the difference between Wisconsin and Louisiana? So I’d read about a natural area, or some small towns by a river, but I couldn’t remember what they were called for the life of me. When I read Chinese words, everything has a ‘x + ing’ regardless if it does or not.
When it came down to it, 3 of the 4 places I’m going to were decided for me. I’m flying into Beijing with my friends Val and Anne, and flying out of Shanghai, so some how I have to connect those two cities. Well, Xi’an is a must see, it’s home to the Terracotta Army, and on the way. But the part I’m looking forward to the most is Yangshuo, which I hadn’t heard of, but I’ve definitely seen. It’s that picturesque China, with giant limestone mountains, called karsts, behind a pristine river. That’s kinda the meat and potatoes of this trip.
Transportation can be tricky for the most skilled traveller, I can’t count how many times it’s left me crying in a train stations, well, actually, I can. Twice. But the point is, this should be relatively straight-forward. I ended up booking 2 domestic flights in China, because the time difference was staggering. It was either a 2-hour flight or a 24-hour train ride. Duh, and each flight was cheep-ish. I will take the overnight train to Xi’an. I don’t know how these trains will compare to Europe’s, but I am excited for the sleeper car! So Jack Kerouac, though I suppose his luxury would be a boxcar, but you get my point.
Because I only have 2 weeks, I decided to skip Hong Kong since I was going to Beijing and Shanghai. I really want to visit Tibet, but that should be a 2-week trip by itself, with another week in Napal, so I never even considered going there this time. But hopefully I will sooner than later!
Another challenging aspect of this trip is my unreasonable desire to carry a backpack and my ‘man-bag’ and that’s it. Not my ‘backpacking’ backpack, just an ordinary school backpack, and that leather satchel I made a few years back. I’m so determined that Effie can't come. So sad!
So, yeah, I’m heading off to China in a day and a bit, but don’t worry, I plan on blogging all about it when I get back. Later alligator!
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