Most visitors to Thailand have a good-sized list of things they want to experience in the country and riding an elephant is usually one of them, but if they knew the treatment those elephants are forced to endure, most would probably make a new list. The problem isn’t the riding itself, though. Unless, you top […]
Survive New Delhi Station and the Rest of India is Easy
New Delhi railway station serves as a great introduction to India in that it combines much of what is annoying about the country into one location. Every visitor to India will have stories of annoying touts and scams and some people will have nothing but. In actuality, only a small part of the country provides […]
Jade Dragon Snow Mountain: Choose the Correct Chairlift or Suffer
When you imagine spending a day in the mountains, you don’t generally picture yourself second-hand smoking hundreds of cigarettes amidst thousands of people in a large, dimly lit room, but that’s pretty much what a day on the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (Yulong Xueshan in Chinese) near Lijiang in China‘s Yunnan province looks like for […]
Bagan by Horse Cart: The Best of Three Bad Options
When most people think of Myanmar, they imagine a hazy, flat plain with hundreds of reddish-brown stupas poking up above the patchy tree cover. The area they are picturing is called Bagan. It lies in Myanmar’s dusty central plains on the banks of the Irrawaddy River and is characterized by not hundreds, but thousands—over 2200, […]
Leaving Danba Difficult Thanks to Minivan Drivers
Following our measly breakfast, it was time to head back to Danba. After our experience with the drunk driver the previous day, we were naturally not all that excited at the prospect of hiring another van to take us back to town. We asked our hosts if they could help us find a sober ride, but [read more…]
Hiring a Tibetan Driver and Somehow Surviving the Experience
After exploring the villages of Zhonglu and Suopo, it was time for lunch. If you remember, our driver felt we should have stopped for lunch much sooner and was none too pleased when 10 am rolled around and we still hadn’t eaten, but he was in a much better mood now that we were finally [read more…]
Exploring the Tibetan Villages of Zhonglu and Suopo
Last week, I wrote about our first afternoon and evening in Danba, which were spent getting a hotel room, arranging a car and driver for the next morning, eating an average meal, and buying fresh fruit and a giant bag of peanuts to supplement that meal. I created quite a little mountain of [read more…]
Danba in Western Sichuan: A Tibetan City I was Actually Allowed to Visit
Traveling around the Tibetan areas of China is best done without much of a plan, as government policy on travel in those regions can change from day to day. It can be quite annoying, to be honest, and I certainly felt that annoyance on my most recent [read more…]
Oh What a Fun Shenzhen Visa Run!
Chinese visa policy changes on a seemingly weekly basis, but one aspect that remains constant is the frustration—frustration with the bureaucracy, frustration with the inefficiency, but mostly frustration that a country as large as China only allows visitors to stay long enough to see about one percent of it. I felt that frustration again on […]
Hanging off the Side of Mandalay’s Crowded Public Transport
You’ll find a lot of options for getting around in Myanmar, but only the most expensive offer any comfort. Most are crowded at best, like the pickup truck above on the streets of Mandalay, and downright painful at worst. I was stupid lucky enough to try just about all of them during my time in […]