It has happened. We all knew it would at some point, and on Wednesday, March 11 2009...it happened. It all started with the free breakfast at my hotel which, at the time, I thought was rather nice. It even kept me full past lunch time..and then dinner time came around and instead of familiar hunger pains...there was just pain. Dr. Eliastam informed me that I had a viral stomach infection, aka FOOD POISONING. Two days later, I feel much better! Although I just ate...

I attempted to upload photos to my blog, but they didn't upload properly so you will just have to imagine what Vietnam looks like for now. I am using the FREE internet at the hotel I am staying at, so I could go somewhere else but that would mean I would have to pay... Anyway, I am in Vietnam and out of China, finally! We spent two nights in Sapa, a village in the northern mountains of Vietnam. Even though it's only 45 minutes for the Chinese border, it was so d...

I have left Yangshuo, Hong Kong has come and gone, and now I am with a new tour group and we are back in China in a place called Kunming. I left my last entry talking about my great day in Yangshuo. What I didn't get to mention was that we had to oppourtunity to teach at a local school for the afternoon, which was absolutely amazing! We split into groups of twos and together taught two classes. I had 5th grade and 3rd grade. The fifth graders were a bit of a han...

The last two days have been amazing, by far the best two days so far. Yesterday, 10 of us got up, had breakfast and rented bikes for a ride in the countryside. We opted out of a getting a guide, wanting instead to be on our own, out of the tourist loop. Anyway, they were selling maps of bike routes so that's all we really needed anyway...right? The maps turned out to have a major gap in them. They showed a large map of all the bike routes around Yangshuo, and an ...

I love Yangshuo. If you can't tell from the photos, this place is gorgeous. It is surrounded by stunning mountains, alongside the CLEAR and CLEAN Li river, and filled with narrow streets with cafes and market stands. Here we are staying at a hotel called the Fawlty Towers, and despite its slightly crumbling appearance, it has some of the softest beds we've encountered so far (and that means a lot to a traveler in China). Getting here required taking a 24 hour t...