Friday night my friends and I all went out to our “local watering hole,” to celebrate the birthday of our friend Adam. Through the shots, loud music and flashing lights I asked my friend Rebecca what she was doing the next day. “I’m walking around Xiamen. It’s 50km,” she told
Must-Read Books! (Aka: My Friends are More Talented than Me)
I realize I’m a bit of a hack, pounding away on my own blog with no care for spelling or proper grammar. (Yes people, I know my mistakes. No, I don’t care.) Luckily I have a bunch of friends that are not at all hacks like me and recently, they
Poll: Expats in China Don’t Fit in With Locals. But you CAN (and Should) Make Friends.
So InterNations, the largest expat network online, recently polled 14,300 expats in every country. Turns out China, ranked incredibly high in expat satisfaction. (Third behind the USA and Malta). Three out of four expats said they were satisfied with their pay, and there was room to grow in China. The
Kashgar (the Far, Far West of China)
Well, my travels are winding down. I ended my trip in Kashgar, one of the farthest west cities in all of China. Here Han Chinese were few and far between, and most travelers were using this as a gateway to or from Pakistan. Kashgar was amazing. By this point I
The Exotic Bazaars and Markets of Xinjiang
One of the coolest parts of Xinjiang was going to the markets and bazaars. They are quite famous and predictably, some have been commoditized for tourists (Like the one in Urumqi which was super lame.) They aren’t quite the dangerous maze of dark alleyways that I heard they used to
The Sunburn Chronicles: Heavenly Lake
Now you have seen from my pictures that the northwest region of China has some shocking beauty. A stark, desert beauty of rainbow mountains with no vegetation, or towering sand dunes in all directions. But what you haven’t seen a lot of is trees and lush forests. That’s because Xinjiang
The Dangers in Xinjiang
As I was preparing to go to Xinjiang I heard one warning again and again from my Chinese friends. “Be careful, it’s dangerous out there.” My answer? “I’m not worried. It’s not me they hate.” You see, Xinjiang people are very different from Chinese people. Perhaps you’ve noticed from my
The Food of Xinjiang (Don’t Read if You’re Hungry)
I think now would be the time to tackle one of the best parts of my trip: the food. One of the things I love about food in China is it is fresh. Every dish has lots and lots of veggies and every spare patch of ground houses a small
The Sunburn Chronicles: Turpan, the Second Lowest Point on Earth
Given my very public aversion to heat you think I’d avoid going to the hottest spot in China. A place that is the second lowest point on earth (after the Dead Sea) and below sea level. Just my luck, in the days leading up to my stop, they had a
Big Ass Buddahs!
You live in asia for awhile you see a lot of temples. And in these temples you see a lot of Buddhas. When you live in China, a country that believes bigger is better, you are bound to see not only Buddha’s but some of the biggest Buddha’s in all the