8 Months This Once

Ok,  I have a new favourite country.  As soon as we landed in the airport, I knew there was something special about the place.  The airport arrivals area was pretty small with a low ceiling and dark wood counters and railings to accompany the brown and orange decor.  It was like being in a hotel lounge in the 1970s, except the wasn't any cigarette smoke.  The line up to get a visa was painfully slow, in fact, everything seemed to happen slowly, but in the most peaceful and dignified way. Our drive into Kathmandu from the airport was hot, dusty, full of honking horns and quick brakes, but I loved it.  The city felt so alive!  We stayed in Thamel, an old and very touristy district and I loved it too.  The character that a place gets when people, cows, dogs, scooters, vehicles and chickens are all trying to get somewhere or do something is really remarkable - there are layers and layers of things going on everywhere you look.  A few months ago...

We arrived in Kathmandu by plane to the biggest and only international airport in Nepal. It was about double the size of Williams Lake airport. We then went to our hotel and made a plan with the trekking company there. We met our guide for our ten day trek in the Annapurna Base Camp area. His name was Bibek. Average street in the capitol of Nepal. Ricksaw drivin by man power He seemed very nice and seemed to speak very good English. He would take the bus to Pokhara that night so that he would be there when we arrived by plane the next day. We made plenty of purchases of outdoor clothes, etc. that we needed for our trek.  Things there were pretty cheap and we were very happy with our purchases. We got lots of chocolate bars because we heard they were expensive in the mountains, and a power bank because it is hard to charge devices up there. We packed up all our stuff, dividing it into stuff we needed for the trek and stuff we didn't. All the stuff we didn...

Maya's Goods and Bads: Goods: The Great Wall because of the scenery - it was the best view we had in China, and how because of how long it was - it went as far as we could see, it seemed to go on forever. The Terracotta Warriors because of the history behind them - I was amazed by how much work it must have been to make them, and that the workers who built them destroyed a lot of them once the Emperor died because they didn't like being his slaves. Bads: The food wasn't my type - except for few dishes in Beijing. I didn't like how they had no idea what personal space is, and they were usually talking so loud.  It was very different from home! Lucas' Summary: The Great Wall was my favourite because there was fresh air and it was so cool to see in person after hearing about it for so long.   Zhanjiejie was astounding!  The massive natural rock sandstone pillars and the incredible, awesome, scary glass bridges blew my mind!  The height of the bridges and t...

* this post was written on a flight from China to Nepal back at the end of March, we're just getting it up on the blog now! About China I, the grandma, Kim’s mom, arrived in Chengdu to meet the family, with the remains of a flu bug & jet lag, since it was over 24 hours since I’d left home. So, although my impressions of Chengdu are a bit foggy, the highlight for me was the visit to the panda reserve. It is heartening to see the success this facility is having with breeding pandas. There are so few left in the wild, mostly due to habitat destruction. This is the first place there has been success at breeding & raising the young. They are so playful, cute, & can they even climb trees! The enclosures are large & seem very natural. How successful the releases back in the wild will be remains to be seen. Leaving Chengdu by overnight train was not an experience I really want to repeat. There was little privacy( 6 beds, 3 stacked on each wall) ; it was very cr...

Last of China This blog was written by Lucas, with photos and captions added by Chris and Kim Ok... so after Xi'an we took a day time bullet train to a small town called Pingyao. It's somewhere about halfway between Xi'an and Beijing.  Along the way we saw caves built into the hillsides that people actually live in.  The smog was pretty bad even away from the big cities. From our comfortable seats on the bullet train travelling at up to 304 km/hr we saw many caves.  Only later did  we find out that some 35 million people in China still live in caves, mostly in this area where the earth is easy to excavate and keeps its strcuture.  Even the late Chairman Mao spent part of his life living in a cave (I've edited the photo to remove much of the smog that blanketed the countryside- see next photo)  Typical smog levels in the countryside! Pingyao was the smallest town we stayed in in China (about 1/2 million people). It only had about 2...