June 16 - Beijing Zoo

One of the main reasons I wanted to go to China this year was to see the pandas at the Beijing Zoo. Apparently there are pandas all over the world in zoos, had I known that before I went I guess I could have saved thousands of dollars. Oh well. I wanted to see the real thing, not that the others aren't real.
Before going to …

June 20 - Luoyang

After spending a few days in Beijing we headed to Luoyang. I am writing this almost a year after the trip, but I think I remember the train from Beijing to Luoyang being about 10 hours, I don't remember. We took a night train so I slept most of the way. The whole purpose of this stop was to see the Longmen Grottoes and Shaolin …

June 28 - Sanjiang ''Bridges Without Nails''

After spending 4 nights and 3 days on the President No. 1 Yangtze River Cruise from Chongqing to Yichang we caught a train to Sanjiang. We actually got pretty lucky arriving at the station when we did. There was only one train headed that direction and it was leaving in 10 minutes. This sort of thing …

June 29 - Longji Rice Terraces


After a short bus ride from Sajiang we arrived in Longsheng, an area known for its rice terraces. As we stepped off the bus we were ambushed by a young lady, probably early 20s and a couple of guys. They were saying something in chinese that we obviously couldn't understand. We told them we wanted to go to the …