Archive for September, 2008
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Electric scooter diaries
To continue with our chronicle of our travels, when we disembarked from our tour boat, we were in Yangshuo, the tourist capital of rural China. Yangshuo is a horrible town with too many tourists and even more hawkers and crooks, so Jeff and I decided we had better get out of dodge, having spent the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Disorganization, Tourist Noobs by Caitlin
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Milking the government censors
With the recent — and most likely partial — disclosure of milk contamination by China’s leading dairy companies, it’s hard not to have deja vu. Reading the articles about the contamination, it’s hard to really convey just how common these brands are. It’d be like learning that Yoplait and Dannon and Nestle sell killer products [...]
No Comments » - Posted in BS, Beijing by Caitlin
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
The academic masochism begins
Today I more or less settled my class schedule with seven classes. All the classes I’ve been to so far have fewer than 10 people, and more people are thinking of switching out of the class, so I may have a really good chance of setting the pace for the classes I’m in. I’m taking [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Beijing, Skool by Caitlin
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Spoken Engrish
On our way to the large tour bus that would eventually take us to the boat dock in Guilin, we rode in a minibus driven by an eccentric, hilarious yet somewhat misguided driver. From what we can tell, he learned his English from an American idiom phrase book. Every sentence was constructed of several idioms [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Engrish, humor, n00b by Caitlin
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
School Dayz
Today was my first day of “real” school at BNU, meaning that it was the first day of fall semester. After a lot of headaches having to do with bureacracy, I more or less figured things out. Let’s save everyone some time and just say that the most important information for international students is posted [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Beijing, Skool by Caitlin
Saturday, September 20th, 2008
Floating down the Li River
The big thing to do in Guilin is to take a boat down the river from Guilin to Yangshuo. The scenery here is incredible and while the town of Yangshuo is the right size for about 15,000 people, 25 million tourists tramp through it each year. Hence, we found the place to be a cesspool [...]
No Comments » - Posted in BS, Tourist Noobs by Jeff
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Nag Nag Nag
Jeff and I have gotten a lot of grief lately for not blogging, so here’s an update. We’re quite far behind on the trip updates, but they’ll get here eventually. We were too busy having fun to blog, I guess. In addition, my parents are in town, so there isn’t much time.
Right now, I have [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Beijing by Caitlin
Monday, September 8th, 2008
Guangzhou at Night
Neither Jeff nor I can claim to be night owls or party animals, but Guangzhou really seems to be the most fun at night. Our hostel was located on what was apparently the main bar drag, but it wasn’t too crowded or rowdy, thankfully. Instead, tons of locals were out eating late dinner and shopping [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Caitlin
Sunday, September 7th, 2008
Of Monkeys and Mosquitoes
Aside from telling us Guangzhou was a wash, most locals advised that Jeff and I travel to Guilin. So we did. Guilin has some of the most beautiful and captivating scenery in China, think The Painted Veil or traditional misty-mountained paintings of China. But it also has more than its fair share of tourists and [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Creatures, Culture!, Life, Tourist Noobs by Caitlin
Friday, September 5th, 2008
Touring in Guangzhou: Don’t do it
While on the long train ride to Guangzhou, we discovered that apparently going there was a mistake. Almost every Chinese person we told we were going there looked confused and asked why. The next thing they said was to watch out for scammers, pickpockets and muggers. Great.
Well, it turned out that Guangzhou wasn’t really as [...]
