We left Windhoek at 7:30am and arrived in Maun at about 3pm. As we approached Maun (about 50km away), we passed a village called Toteng. We didn’t see any cars, bikes or stores. In fact, the only reason I noticed it was that the speed limit was reduced from 120km to 80km.
We just completed our six-day trek in Western Sikkim, India. We met our guide, “Paul” at the airport near Darjeeling.
After arriving in Japan, we spent the first three days in Tokyo. We visited several of the city sights, including the zoo, Ginza and Shinjuku. We also took a day trip to Nikko, which was a two hour train ride each way.
We arrived in Tokyo at approximately 2:45 pm on Sunday. We changed some money, activated our train pass and took the one hour ride into the city. We are staying at one of the three youth hostels in central Tokyo.
Well, tomorrow we return to the U.S. So I thought I would take a few paragraphs to summarize my thoughts in a fun way. The 10 most surprising things I found in Japan were…
Beijing was the first stop on our three week trip. We visited the Forbidden City in addition to our day trip to the Great Wall.
We left Beijing’s West Train Station at 12:45pm on Wednesday to begin our ten hour journey to Luoyang. We were able to get hard seats (for about $12 each) on a ‘K’ train, which is an express that makes very few stops.
It is Thursday night and we are in Luoyang, which is southwest of Beijing. We arrived here late last night after a 10 hour train ride in “hard class.” Hard class is not necessarily the seats (they were padded) but it refers to the cheapest seats of travel – one the Chinese use.
After some rough traveling, we first visited the pandas in Chengdu and then relaxed in Dali. Among the highlights there was a visit to a local market.
Our last stop in China proper was in Yangshao, a short distance from Guilin. Here we enjoyed a variety of activities, including biking and hiking.
