Travel Life

How's everything going there? You working? It's Saturday, I just went out to Korean bbq with lily, got home after picking up some supplies for my house.  You will laugh, i kind of tried eating ... Bbq'd cow dick -_- not gonna lie, didn't taste bad, every thing was covered in chilli pepper though :p so really even the chicken heart and stomachs were the same taste, just different texture. Miss you guys, hope you are well. The astrill Vpn is not really doing what it should be for Apple products so basically it's only good for everything except Apple because Apple is a greedy and rude company :( Give my best to everyone, I'll be sending something in the mail tell ma she has my address, I'm sending you a copy now so she can constantly as you for it too :p  Miss you a ton, always thinking about what I would be doing if I was at home right now, and I think it would not be as pleasant because I wouldn't be happy doing anything else other than teaching. Don'...

I'm Here we are, Damian airport in the middle of the day. Woke up beside my qin ai de this toning and made some coffee, hopped on a Qing gui ride for  Salian airport with three other friends. The lady went home, we are at the airport. Ready to go, already sweating, unable to admire outside weather. After finding out our flight is not domestic and not quite international, we are placed in an odd holding cell area segregated from the rest of the airport, I don't know why, maybe just because it is  Singapore?  Talking to the guys, apparently they heard there are no firewalls in Cambodia and the other countries we are visiting. That will be nice if it is true! So buddy has taken care of the hostel in Singapore; the English is welcome spoken and very common there. The exchange rate on currency is about that of a CAD sooooo I need to watch spending, hoping for the Visa card venues! Hoping it won't affect our chances to see the night safari and the fountain of youth. We leave Si...

Please follow these: 1. Set DNS on iOS device to: 58.241.243.74 (in WiFi settings) Follow these tutorial links on how to set DNS to 58.241.243.74 for Iphone - http://wiki.astrill.com/index.php/Astrill_Setup_Manual:How_to_change_your_iPhone%27s_DNS for ipad - http://wiki.astrill.com/index.php/Astrill_Setup_Manual:How_to_change_your_iPad%27s_DNS 2. Start astrill ios application. You should be able to connect to available servers. There will be a few which are working in China. We recommend China Telecom or China Unicom, depending on your ISP. 3. iOS device will not be able to access internet with this DNS settings if VPN is disconnected. If you want to use internet without Astrill, remove DNS and set to previous value. Please note that this won't work for mobile/cellular data connection. If you're using mobile/cellular data connection : 1) On the main screen tap on Settings icon. 2) Tap on General. 3) Tap on VPN or on Network, then on VPN. 4) Under VPN you ca...

Visa has been applied for to travel to cbpdia, loas and I have my visa for Vietnam.  I have some cash saved up for the trip now that I am paid! Thank goodness and all the travel clothes I need for southeast asia.  The passports are silly costs. Money grabs really, but cheaper than what they used to be, hopefully they are not fake or setting us up for jail or something :p So far we are starting in Singapore, heading to Malaysia and then making our way to Thailand and loas (maybe loas) then we are heading to Cambodia and finally Vietnam. So ya roughly 5 pr so countries in one month. Funny how looking at the month you wonder where all your time will be spent and you think darn that looks short, what do you mean I only get like 22 days or so of travelling!? :p #spoiled I think of most things this holiday I'm going to miss my Ren Li. I have not had the opportunity to tell you much about her yet but ya, she has been a new part of my life, a beautiful Chinese woman with similar aspir...

Smoggy day :( could be better but I have been trying to do this for far to long and I currently have the opportunity to do so. Seizing the day. Origin point jinshitan, qinggui to kaifaqu. Stopped in kaifaqu, heading to tong shi tai, it is the first stop of the smaller line that stems from kaifaqu station. When getting off the train in kaifaqu, walk to the railway to your right that has the next station sign pointing in the direction your train came from. Get on train. Get off the train and head down stairs, exit off the same way you entered the train. Once you punch out of the station, exit the right side of the building onto dongbei road, a short distance to your left you will see a curve I to the next street which is______ road, go down that road _____ a short distance ahead you will see a hard to notice bus stop, jump onto bus 4, take it till they kick you off. After you get kicked off you will be confused and around what looks to be a street market. Lots of places to get food and w...

Currently the one restuarant that comes to mind with regards to in-house or brand specific brewing is "HaiDiLao", as far as I understand, their beer is brewed in HuBei and their label is slapped on the bottle. Similar to buying a pair for luxury brand sunglasses, they are all made by the same factory, but the specific products are claimed by specific purchasers along with those copyrights. Now China being a developing nation in the way of copyright laws, its plausible that HaiDiLao beer isn't actually HaiDiLao's beer, but a local brewer's from HuBei. With that being said, its still not bad beer, nothing to write home about, but good-and priced appropriately given the establishment.  One thing living in China that I always appreciated and found interesting was the personal touches that restuarants and other service establishments put on their storefronts/in their establishment. For me, yes, that used to come to specifically beer (good beer would be nice), not too i...

Where in the world can you see tigers, Siberian tigers, lion tigers (ligers) and even white tigers?! Well, for starters, china and Russia. Yes,! In china, mainly the north, there are Siberian tigers, the thing about these beautiful and endangered species of mammal or big cat, is that they reside in a conservatory park. This is known by expats as the Siberian Tiger Park in Haerbin. The place the live is hot in summer and Thunder Bay sort of cold in the winter, by that I mean, the cold is quite dry to many other places, the feeling is such, you can get warm, and when you are warm you stay warm. Not like here in dalian where the cold is bone deep.  The tiger park lows for amazing pictures, real life experience and the opportunity for people to bond between nations over the fascination of beauty that a certain creature has.  The tours are started in a bus through the park, you feel like you are in Jurassic park and like if the bus dies...well so will you. The people you are travel...

A city of 10 million, 2.5 of which are in the urban core. At least they know the warmth of people standing together is a thing! Really spread out city with a fair bit to see mostly in the winter but also in the summer there are noticeably nice beach and hike areas for travellers to visit.  Which is it? Harbin or haerbin? I am confused because the spelling in the second word was seen around the city but then the common (maybe English) of it is Harbin. I guess the idea could be taken much similarly to the Jinshitan or jinshitun debate among expats who are too bored for their own good. Open to suggestions and don't say "get a life". I believe there is a large gap in the pinyin, oral aspect of the speech and the Chinese characters. Pinyin is handy and easy to tell the tones but very much unknown to some individuals as they normally use characters. This is something I noticed travelling through China. Yes, obviously dialects are different among regions as well as ethnic design...

Where to begin... Amazing woman, beautiful traditional Chinese attitude :) great for having around when this outlander can't figure out red from black, well actually I know hong and hei :p We randomly met through the assistance of a student whose father was a friend of a friend, haven't looked back since. She has taught me how to cook traditional Chinese and darn, she is good! We have many adventures to come and much more to learn about each other, it is hard to believe that this small amount time spent together has brought us this close :) She is an experienced educator and former tour guide, so not only is she awesome at teaching me Chinese but she is also probably quite awesome to travel with (especially if she is really into all the same things I am into when I travel, thrills, food and fun). When I met Lily, I was seeing someone else. Then after we stopped seeing each other, Lily and I found that there was a certain attraction between us. I knew that her and I were going t...

A fever of 103.5 Fahrenheit, what do you do; you are in china, fairly alone, feel like you can overcome it but start to get kind of worries because it has been getting worse? Last night I took my chances and made my first and hopefully last visit to the emergency room here in jinshitan, it is on the barbecue street just around the corner from Suzan's. I had this angelic and incredibly sweet nurse Lushun who took right good care of me, she help me get everything I needed and got me comfortably hooked up to the healing process. I still don't fully understand what I have, probably the flu, and I still don't know what was in the iv or shots I got, meh, next day I am in my own bed and bl feeling a but better, granted I felt a bit better the first time I got this fever and took a rest :s Stupid sickness screwed up my last get together with my girlfriend before she leaves for Florida today, she was having none of it, she said I wasn't allowed to cook with such a high fever las...