Pictures from the mud cave, eating pig brain, Everest from the plane, the bicycle built for two, the Li River boat and our drunk Chinese train-mates! Share: Share on Facebook Tweet This E-mail

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I keep needing to write about this and that and before yesterday and two days before that and all these other things. Doing it in sequential order would make most sense but tonight’s dinner jumps to the front of the line, though I didn’t eat even a chopstick-full of it. Greg, on the other side of the short round table, was sweating from every gland as he crushed five plates of the dinner. We are in steaming Chongqing, a city with over 37 million people in its municipality. It’s steaming because it’s not uncommon for temperatures to be in the 100′s, and even locals bead up with sweat and complaint. There is a traditional Chinese meal, prepared most famously in this city called “hotpot”. It’s a spicy, spicy, spicy broth that sizzles on top of a burner on each table. It seems fondue-esque but I assure you it’s not fancy one bit, in fact, two handfuls of men across the restaurant were half-naked for the entire meal. They sit shirtless because of how grossly sweaty the spice and heat makes them. Exposed sweat helps them cool off (like a lot of things in China, it makes perfect sense, though it

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From Hong Kong to mainland China, you must go through customs in an otherwise pointless-for-travelers city called Shenzhen. We had a 6-hour layover from when our train arrived there until our overnight bus to Yangzhou left at 7pm. I was enthused to find something in town to occupy time, but Greg felt it was a lost cause and decided to sit in the waiting rooms. Feeling safe in the small area around the station, I decided to take off on my own search. Twenty minutes into my hunt, I settled on the fact that there really truly was absolutely nothing to do in this business-center-type town. I could shop through fake labels, of course anywhere if I wanted, but I was already over that an hour into China. Out of the deep darkness of my despair, however, a woman on the corner of one of the hopeless streets proposed a massage, and she was very enticing. Okay, creeps, it was broad daylight and she dressed like a first grade teacher, the spa owner was not the happy ending kind. Plus, she had all sorts of business women being pampered by pedicures in her simple, yet prim spa. They were all

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For all of today’s gawking, I deserve to be stepped on, shit on and slapped by every New York City tourist that I’ve ever cursed at for getting in my hardly urgent way. This city, Hong Kong, is bursting with modernism, efficiency and tidiness. It is so technologically-excelled and energetic with bright lights, flirty advertisements and of course rolling human traffic- all of which opens the jaw and widens the eyes, no pun intended. We flew here from Nepal and stepped off the plane to a large and pristine airport. Coming from a country untouched by time, I felt so crazed and stunned by the immediate opposition. Nepal lives in B.C. time, and I’d liken the airport here to a 15-years-in-the-future America with how digitally lit all the directions and designs were. The bus that shuttled us into the city had free wifi and continued the same spotless and flashy style from the terminals. We grabbed dinner last night at a traditional Chinese restaurant. Greg got noodle soup topped with pork belly. I got noodle soup topped with nothing- or so I thought I conveyed in my order to the waiter. Pointing to my self, waving my hands sideways then

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