KOREA: Love Hotels

I was recently in the Republic of Korea, recharging my body with enough soju to make it through another Joseon Dynasty. One way of staying there is by living in what the Koreans call “Motels”. They’re also known as Love Hotels. They have them in Japan but I’ve never seen them in mainland China or […]

Taishan (泰山) Chapter 3: Final

Being as my head is already huge, there was no room left for my face to swell up anymore. Quite frankly I didn’t have any aspirations of picking up backwards mountain women during our 6 hour hike up Taishan. I really didn’t care much about the bites, other than they itched like a piece of […]

Taishan (泰山) Chapter 2

The imbecility of my prior actions began to set in as I accepted that I had in fact missed the train and this was not some horrible hangover induced hallucination. The hangover itself was kicking into full gear and I hadn’t had the masochistic pleasure of one like this for a long time. The only […]

Taishan (泰山) Chapter 1

Mount Tai or Tai Shan is one of the 5 holy daoist mountains of China. It is also the only one located in my home province of Shandong. My friend thought it would be a good place to visit during the week-long break we had as the rest of the class went on school trips […]

Changyi (昌邑)

Qingdao’s luxurious Meng Gu Lu Bus Station This weekend I took my first Chinese long distance bus ride up to the city of Changyi to visit my Japanese friend. I’ve wanted to visit him now for a while for a number of reasons. 1)Partying at the same two expat bars in Qingdao gets mighty lame […]

The Asian City Triumvirate

I rencently went on a lengthy tour of the big three Asian cities. Along with a series of photos of them, here’s a few words to tag along. All of these cities are vying to be “Asia’s World City”, much like Toronto silly quest to be “world class”. The truth is, it really depends on […]

That place outside of Tokyo…

For the first time I made it outside of the mass of humanity that is the Kanto area. I decided instead of forking over $900 to the greedy airlines to take me on a two hour flight from Narita to Qingdao, I’d take the train and boat super happy combination vacation. The bullet trains out […]

Golden Weekend in Shanghai Day 3

Despite taking it easy the night before, I didn’t wake up till 2pm. So having wasted most of the day already I figured I’d spend what was left of the day just walking around absorbing Shanghai. I was hungry enough to eat a whole maternity ward of babies, so I headed to a little place […]

Golden Weekend in Shanghai Day 2

Today was a mission. Well actually, every day in China is a mission. But today’s specific mission objectives were to acquire proper gear to wear. In Qingdao, it is impossible to find clothing with any style. The mentality here is to only wear what other people are already wearing, or a very basic derivative of […]

Golden Weekend in Shanghai Day 1

My adventure begins, when I’m made aware of the fact that I will have 10 consecutive days off for the Golden Week holiday starting April 27th and running to May 7th. If you aren’t in China, you’re probably wondering what this is all about. China, you see, has 3 weeklong national weeks peppered throughout the […]

Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region

Lhasa is an amazing place. The culture is completely different from that of the Chinese, however Chinese influence is starting to squeeze in. I can’t think of much to say about the place so I’m going to run off a bunch of unsightful knowledge I found by meeting some locals. If you’re the type of […]

Guide to the Great Wall @ Mutianyu

If you go to China, the one thing everyone will ask you about is if you saw the Great Wall. It is definitely China’s most famous landmark and 100% awesome. But visiting it isn’t as easy as you would think for something that’s 4000 miles long. Unless you’re a hardcore backpacker type, or you’re out […]

Fast Guide to Downtown Beijing

Although I don’t really like Beijing all that much, it does have a few things you definitely have to check off that list of things to do before you die. If you don’t mind being harrassed by the all too familiar “looka looka, tshirt, wata, best price” they are definitely worth the $2-$5 it will […]