However, I don't plan on giving a day-by-day recall of my trip. That be boring. Instead, I'm just going to give a quick summary of each location and specific events that stick out enough will be turned into entire posts. I'll try and upload more pictures from the trip when I'm done rooting through my camera.
Though most of the trip can be summarized by one picture:
Why is Asia like this?
Shanghai
Only one day spent here and it was easily the second hottest place we were at. As expected of Shanghai, lots of nice places to shop at and see. Wish we could have spent more time here but we were pretty much just dropping by on our way to our next destination.
Chengdu
I can't say I liked this part of the trip. It wasn't anything special, nothing we hadn't seen on our other tours from last year. The tour guide was a bit of a jerk, perhaps unintentionally but still a jerk. Being in the Sichuan province meant that all our food was spiced in the Sichuan style. I didn't care for it, and I'll elaborate on that in a future post.
The only memorable thing was going to see giant and red pandas. I have come to the conclusion that the only reason that giant pandas aren't extinct is because we're taking care of them. These guys were some of the laziest and dumbest looking animals I've ever seen. What other creature defecates itself while eating, topples over, and then falls asleep when it can't get back up?
This guy right here.
Guilin
This was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Possibly biased due to the better tour guide. There were also a lot more interesting things in my opinion. This includes scenery, culture, and food. You know the oddly shaped mountains that are usually depicted in Chinese paintings? They're from Guilin.
Example.
Taiwan
I didn't like Taiwan all that much, it felt like some sort of inverted China. Where the drivers actually yielded to pedestrians, bikers wore helmets, and the streets are arguable cleaner. That being said, the tours weren't that great. It seriously felt like it was nothing but Taiwanese propaganda. How great they were compared to China, and look at how successful we are without China, and how we seperated from China.
You get the point.
The street food is fairly decent however.
Hong Kong
Ok, I might be slightly biased when it comes to Hong Kong because my Mom's from Hong Kong but Hong Kong is always my favorite part of any China vacation. The food here is great, the shopping is great, the subway system is amazing with excellent malls attached to most stations. Everything is so cheap too, I just wish it wasn't so hot here...
Bonus: Macau
Oh boy, where to begin. I hate this place. There is nothing to see or do here. It's like an Asian knock-off of Las Vegas with some of the hotels literally copied from the Vegas ones. The stores inside are nothing but high end, overpriced Western brands like Gucci and Prada. Stepping outside is like walking into a sauna. There is so much I disliked about that city.
Ugh...
And that wraps it up. My next post is actually the one year anniversary of my blog, after that, I'll share a few choice stories from my China trip. Oh, and the food poisoning issue is included in that. Quick spoiler, it wasn't because of any Chinese food I ate.
It's good to be back blogging.
