Our second stop involved flying into Hanoi at night, landing in the dreary darkness near the airport and passing through the messy, sprawling outer boundaries of the Vietnamese capitol in a fast-moving taxi. We were deposited in the care of a young Vietnamese woman from our guesthouse in the midst of a swirling whirlpool of… Read More I love the smell of motos in the evening
Initially our plan had been to go to Guilin, a city in southwest China surrounded by the limestone mountains that make its famed karst landscape. I however underestimated the demand on the Chinese railways for the holidays, and found that ambitious travel agents had snapped up all the available tickets within a day after they… Read More Tour d’Asia, Part 1: Kuala Lumpur
About halfway or a little more through the big trip of the school year, with the aid of a 5-week break from work thanks to the Chinese New Year festivities. Kathleen met me in Hong Kong on 12 January, and from there we have since been to Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, Saigon, Phnom Penh, and now… Read More Notes from the Road
So in the midst of the busy-ness and activity that consumed my normally free and easy 13-hour work week in the beginning of January I never got around to putting down my thoughts and experiences for these two cities. Needless to say that writing now, nearly a month and several countries later, the fine details… Read More Delayed Updates- Suzhou/Hangzhou
Last week I was liberated from my teaching duties of the term, which culminated in Andrew and I spending several minutes after our final class signing autographs for some students. This was a definite first, and a little funny. I think some students were worried they may never see us again, I’m sure at least… Read More Adventure Free Time – Shanghai Edition
Thanks to some quirks in Europe hundreds of years ago and the expansion of Western influence at the turn of the 20th century in Asia, I was able to celebrate New Year’s Eve in China much as I would at home. People littered the streets late into the night on a scale that surpassed vastly… Read More So this is the New Year
I have heard from a number of people curious to know what exactly a typical day consists of here. The majority of my writings have rambled on about the trips I’ve managed to squeeze in in my time away from Shenzhen, so I suppose explaining a ‘normal’ day in China could be of interest to… Read More By Popular Request
So the morning of the third day in Manila I got up and wandered around Malate finding breakfast donuts, a luxury for me in a place like China, and one I was happy to indulge. That day I took a bus ride out from the city to another town called Tagaytay to the south. It… Read More MRT, KTV, and JC
Last week I had the pleasant fortune of a few days off of work, giving me a four day weekend thanks to the midterm test period for my students. With a few weeks of lead time, I set about planning at trip to Manila, the capitol of the Philippines lying out in the South China… Read More Post-colonial Ambitions
This weekend began with a small group expedition Friday evening to Macau. For those unaware, Macau is a former Portuguese colony that was returned to China in 1999 after a good four hundred years or so of foreign rule. It is administered much like Hong Kong, with its own private government, currency, and strict border… Read More Wow for Macau
Zak Abroad 