After five years working in London, I decided it was time to move back to Los Angeles, but not before taking a year off to see the world. I gave up my great job with Lehman Brothers in Administration and a fantastic flat (and roommate) I’d lived in for over three years, packed up all my belongings into some 60 cubic feet of boxes and said farewell to the wonderful friends I made in London. Before setting off for Asia, I spent seven weeks in the States including a weekend getaway in Chicago with my best friends from high school, corrective eye surgery in Philadelphia, Aud and Rob’s wedding in Bermuda, 13 days in Israel on Birthright (with a side trip to Petra) and time in quiet Oak Park with my parents and sister. Then, on July 18, 2010 at 1am, with only 13 kilograms in my 50L backpack and a small shoulder bag, I boarded a flight to Singapore. The goal of my adventure is not one of self-discovery or mending a broken heart but a journey of true desire to explore the world, experience new cultures, taste various cuisines, explore beautiful wildernesses, meet local people, and maybe learn some Spanish along the way. What lies below are my stories (or more of a daily recount of events) from the road.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tuesday, September 14, 2010
  • Breakfast at the hotel, La Moo meets us (we couldn’t find her at first because she was waiting in the breakfast area and we were sitting outside)
  • Walked around the old town in Shangri La, cute streets with intricately designed wood buildings
  • Drove to Tiger Leaping Gorge, another horrible toilet with no doors
  • Strolled along the Gorge, luckily the rain let up while we walked but you can only go a couple kilometers and the other side of the Gorge was undergoing construction; beautiful landscape but not as striking as I expected
  • Lunch near the Gorge – we had to pick ingredients from baskets which were sitting at the side of the restaurant (if you can call it that), somewhat hard to order food that way but we made a good selection and ended up with egg, tomato and squash blossom stir fry, scallion soup, ham dish, rice, fried potato (which our guide called pizza like)
  • Our new guide Steven, met us after lunch (yep) and we started the drive to Lijiang
  • Stopped at the first bend in the Yangtze and a small town for the stone drum town, started pouring right before we got in the car
  • Raining on the way to Lijiang but the scenery was stunning – rice paddies, green fields, roaming animals
  • Got to the hotel (in the old town of Lijiang) and went to an Italian restaurant, Blue Papaya, for dinner since I was craving some Western food.  Daddy not feeling good so he just had soup and rice, but I had a pizza pie!  Yum!!!
  • Strolled back in the rain to WangFu Hotel (our worst of the trip)


Language barrier: When our guide Steven first met us, he said to me, “So you just graduated university?”  I replied no and he said that’s what La Moo had told him.  I told her that I graduated five years ago.  Made me wonder what else she thought we said.  Of all our guides, she spoke the worst English and was the hardest to understand.  Oh well.
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