Words is all good and well, but travelling is also all about the sights. And so far I’ve had the pleasure of some amazing ones.
So true to form I’ve started uploading pics from my travels to my Flickr account. First up is Beijing and the Beijing to Hanoi train ride.
Beijing to Hanoi train ride Flickr set
Vietnam coming up next.
Popularity: 5%
Without a doubt one of the reasons and motivations behind my trip, apart from wanting to take a break and see the world, is food. Having the chance to try out local dishes, taste new flavours, discover new things as well as see markets, ingredients and just how people are around food, is something I really love. It was a big reason behind my move to Japan, and I indulged aplenty while there, and now that I’m travelling around South East Asia it’s still one of the things that gets me really excited and hyped when I arrive somewhere.
I’ve been meaning to write about Japanese food in more detail, for well over 6 months now, but lazyness and life got in the way. I’ll get round to it eventually. Looking at my trip so far though, and considering I finished work at the beginning of June, my own little food oddisey started in Japan. With two weeks to kill before I left for China, a friend of mine came over for a holiday and we indulged in all manners of Japanese culinary delights, which was a great way to leave the country.
Popularity: 5%
Having now left China behind, there are still a few things I’ve been thinking about regarding the country and its people. I took a train from Beijing to Hanoi, a two nights, one day journey which gave me plenty of time to think but also observe the rest of the country as we crossed the majority of it going south.
As I mentioned in my earlier post one of the things that really shocked me about Beijing, and which seems to be echoed by a lot of people who visit it or live there, is how polluted the city is. The fact that I visited in early summer when the heat was going up definitely didn’t help, but I was really taken back by how smoky the city was and felt, how dusty you ended up after a few hours of walking around and just how oppresive the pollution felt.
Taking the train south, that feeling was only continued as we crossed provinces, all covered by clouds and a definite sense of more pollution, white smoke emanating from countless factories either on the side of the tracks or in the distance. In nearly 6 days spent in China I saw the sky for maybe 4 hours in total on one day. And that really makes you think.
Popularity: 5%
I left Japan on wednesday this week, on a little ‘world tour’ of places I’ve always wanted to visit. It’s nice to be able to take a break for a couple of months even if the specter of money and ’security’ always hangs up somewhere in the background. Still you only live once and having lost my job at the paper in Tokyo, the occasion to take a break and travel was too good to pass, especially as being in Tokyo meant that parts of the world I’ve always wanted to visit were a lot closer and easier to get to.
The trip started in Beijing, where I’ve been for about 4 days. It wasn’t the place I originally wanted to start my trip from, but I realise now that it’s actually quite a fitting way to start. And that’s because Beijing is truly a world away from Tokyo in many many ways.
Even though my time here has been short, it’s been really vivid and enjoyable, full of surprises, impressions and discoveries. If I had to try and sum up Beijing in a few words it would have to be: smoky, chaotic and surprising.
Chaotic is definitely the impression that will stay with me the most after I leave this town. Coming from Tokyo with its relative organisation, cleanliness and hypercapitalist overtones, Beijing just hits you upside the head. The place is chaotic in so many ways, it took a little while to get my head around it after being in Tokyo for so long. But while this chaotic element is surprising, and daunting, it’s also incredibly refreshing.
Popularity: 5%
Recent Comments