He says: It's been an intense few days of travel. A mere 48 hours ago we were in Australia, then yesterday we spent the day in Singapore, and now (after a crazy seven hour turbulent flight) we made it to Beijing. My only real job in planning this trip, other than booking our hotels, was to organize a ride to see The Great Wall. It was on my Nicholson/Freeman list (aka bucket list) and I did plenty of research on the web to find the right driver to take us there...

She says: Shanghai (pronounced, as we learned, as "Shung-hi") was, for us, a study of opposites, as we've found so many Asian cities to be. It reminded us in turns of New York, Paris, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Shanghai was one of our many layover stops on this trip and we had just under 24 hours from our arrival until our departure to explore this massive city. Luckily, we were reminded by Red Pine friends that the younger brother of our friend, Clark has been livi...

He says: What a difference a day makes. Tokyo and Shanghai are like night and day. Gone was the order and courtesy we had grown accustomed to during our time in Japan. From the moment we stepped off the plane into China, it was chaos. We took the world's fastest train, the Maglev (top speed of 421km/h) to a subway station - we reached 301km/h. It was like a really smooth roller coaster ride and was super fun. The subway ride to near our hotel was full of teenager...

He says: The biggest challenge in HK so far is not the language barrier or finding your way around the city, it's staying hydrated in 45 degree heat. I'm pretty sure we drank 14 liters of water yesterday as we trekked around the city. We had originally planned on making the hour long jet boat journey to Macau (aka Vegas east) but decided to take more time to explore HK. Our hotel rocks (the photo accompanying this post is the view from our room). Everyone who wor...

He says: Our first full day in Hong Kong started with a buffet breakfast of champions in the hotel that was just what the food doctor ordered. I won't get into great detail about what was consumed, but let's just say there may have been pancakes, bananas, and vanilla bread involved. Also, I'm pretty sure we had the most plates of food of anyone in the restaurant, so we won. The heat is nuts here - I think it's actually the same temp as in Ottawa right now - in t...