A Week in Xinjiang Province

I caught a flight from Lhasa to Urumqi and arrived in the evening. The next morning, I tried to go to the Xinjiang museum, but it was closed for May Day. I ended up going to the bazaar, meeting a really cool Chinese woman, and spending the whole afternoon eating Uyghur baked goods and hanging…

A Week in Xinjiang Province

I caught a flight from Lhasa to Urumqi and arrived in the evening. The next morning, I tried to go to the Xinjiang museum, but it was closed for May Day. I ended up going to the bazaar, meeting a really cool Chinese woman, and spending the whole afternoon eating Uyghur baked goods and hanging…

Everest Base Camp, Tibet

After spending three days in Lhasa, we spent the next four days on the road to visit the Everest Base Camp! We set out from Lhasa in the morning to drive to Shigatse. The drive took about six hours. Many animals crossed our path. When we arrived, we went straight to the monastery. It’s famous…

Lhasa, Tibet

I’ve just gotten back from a big trip to Tibet and Xinjiang Province. This will be the first of my four blog posts about my trip! If you’ve ever looked into going to Tibet as a foreigner, you’ll know that it’s logistically complicated and expensive. My trip was not really an exception, but the stars…

A Weekend in Huangshan

This past weekend I went to Huangshan with a couple of friends. We had an amazing time and really lucked out on the weather! On Friday evening, we took the last bus from Hangzhou to Huangshan park, which takes about 4 hours. We arrived about 9:30 and checked into the Kunlun hostel. We were very…

Beijing

Last week I went to Beijing for the first time. Here’s what I did! I took the train to Beijing from Hangzhou. It was a high speed train (高铁), so it only took 5 hours and it was really comfortable. We arrived just after 1pm, then we headed to where we were staying to drop…

The Tale of Two Passports

I have two passports now! Here’s why… I got mu last passport (on the left) in early 2014 and now I have a new passport, which I got almost exactly three years later. This is because I filled the other one up, which was one of only two items on my bucket list. So at…

Travel Journal

I wanted to introduce a project I completed while traveling during Spring Festival here in China.I completed my first ever travel journal. I started it while I was traveling in India. I continued on my trip to Thailand later that month. Then I filled the rest of the notebook with my journal entries from my…

Guilin & Yangshuo, China

From Zhangjiajie, we headed back to Changsha for one night and then took a train to Guilin! We got to Guilin in the evening and had some time to rest after two consecutive travel days. We made some arrangements and also got the chance to do some much-needed laundry.  The next day, we went to…

Kunming, Yunnan, China

I took the overnight train from Lijiang to Kunming, which is the capital of Yunnan Province. I took the overnight train twice in Yunnan province. This is the soft sleeper. I took the hard sleeper the other time. They are both about the same level as comfort – I wouldn’t really use the word soft…