Spring Breeze Off The Great Wall

Great Wall, Badaling, China

Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China

The Trip: Where I've Been and Where I'm Going

May 9, 2013
On a plane over some ocean, flying to some country.

The plan:

I’ve been traveling from The Navajo Reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico to eventually reach the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Along the way I have stopped in Bay City, Texas, New Orleans, and my home in Tallahassee, Florida. I’ve flown out of Jacksonville to my other home in Boston to meet Maryclaire and we’ll go to London. Then we’ll head to Shenzhen, China via Hong Kong to teach Family Medicine.

As a break we’ll take a week in Hong Kong and then to Beijing to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, Tienaman Square and the many, many tourist traps sprung on unsuspecting Westerners in Beijing.

Maryclaire will return to Boston and I’ll continue on to Sydney, Australia for a week, bounce off of New Zealand, and then finally land at the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to meet my ship, the Barque Picton Castle, her Captain, and crew for 3 months in the South Pacific as the Medical Officer.

When I’m done I’ll arrive in LA, see some friends in California, and take a train or bus the rest of the way back to Boston. Then we’ll move more permanently to Asheville, North Carolina, my third home.

Around the World in a few days. Planes, Trains, Automobiles, Land, Sea, and Air.

Life is awesome.

Beware: if you are flying to Australia tomorrow, you need a Visa.

Beware: never book through Chinese travel agents you’ve never met.

The Great Wall of China. All recommendations be damned, we did it easily for $1.60 round trip for travel, and $4.50 each for admission. No jade shops, no crappy tour guides. The 12 hour tourist: we came, we saw, we left.

Saying to hell with the tour groups in the morning, going to take the train 43 miles out of Beijing and attempt to see the Great Wall on our own time and schedule.

In Beijing. Survived getting to the city center from the airport using the subway. Just match up the squiggly lines and you’re set.

And Yahoo apparently just bought Twitter so let’s see some Flickr Pro integration.

Leaving for Beijing.

The Buddha’s Birthday

To celebrate the Buddha’s Birthday we visited the Tian Tan Buddha, the largest in the world (for now), and Po Lin Mon monastery on a foggy afternoon on the mountain.

May 12, 2013

Bo'an District, Shenzhen, China

“I have rapidly gone from being a vegetarian approximately 4 days ago to eating shrimp on the Texas Gulf, fish and chips in London to oysters, squid, and grouper this morning, and now Fugu this evening. ”

That was day one after arrival in China.

Day 3 here and I’m pretty sure we’ve eaten every sea creature there is.

I think one of them crawled out of the sea too.

Sushi Night

May 14, 2013
Bo'an District, Shenzhen China.

Maryclaire, Thomas and I had lots of sushi last night with our host Rainbow. My first time having sushi!

Anyway, we had a long hot hallucinatory night that has culminated with therapeutic vomiting that was so remarkably pleasant I have concerns for my future eating habits.

I can’t believe how happy I feel after puking.

We are strongly suspicious of the escargot we both dutifully consumed last night per host request. Maryclaire this morning noted that she finally identified the ‘strange texture’ as the snails head.