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Now that I arrived in Chiang Mai, and am finally able to enjoy some nice-quality free WiFi I can write a bit more about what happened these last few days.

The trip is going pretty well and my enthusiasm for Thailand is growing. In terms of organization I finally managed to do most of my plane tickets booking, so not only I arrived in Chiang Mai, but I also got tickets to Luang Prabang and on to Siem Reap. All in all pretty good work

Still no photos – but a few good bits. First of all, a nice evening in Bangkok – catching ‘happy hour’ at one of the beer bars, one of the many on Soi 4 where my hotel was. the nice part – beside the amazing music – was that they had Chelsea vs Manchester United on 3 plasma TVs, and Muay Thay on the remaining two. Combined with a game of pool it was a great combination!

The second good bit – my first experience with Air Asia. I think that Asian airlines all abide by the rule that they have to hire only highly attractive stewardesses. I first noticed that on Shanghai Air. however, the nicest surprise was the actual plane. An Airbus A320 which arrived in Thailand just the day before. All shiny and new, looked absolutely beautiful. And it even had air humidifiers! A real treat for my contact lenses. I will also fly with them from Hanoi to Bangkok, so I hope I will have the same great experience.

Now in Chiang Mai, my first thing to decide is what to do in the next 3 days. There are so many opportunities, treks, and activities to do here it is actually hard to decide!

This post was long overdue, always in the making and always left for “another time”. Well, what with the weekend around the office corner I finally found the time to write about one of the “must-do” visits in China: a visit to the Great Wall.

I finally organized this trip on the last day I stayed in Beijing, right before going by train to Shanghai. It was not the smartest thing, as right after I returned from the Great Wall I had to go to the train station. However, this is my usual lack of planning. In the evening before I made a reservation to one of the two available tours to the Great Wall (available at my hostel).

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This is the second part of the post I have written regarding moving around in Shanghai, Beijing and in-between. If you are more interested about the trains and planes you can get to get from city to city you should check that post first.

In this post I will post a few pics from the subway and try to explain a bit how one should get from place to place. Maybe someone who was thinking about going to China but had concerns regarding the means of getting around. Well, all those concerns were definitely misplaced. I cannot tell anything about other places besides Beijing and Shanghai – but I do plan to continue the research. Until then – I have to do a bit of praising for the subway systems in these two cities.

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The post today is going to have more of an utilitarian purpose. I know when I started to plan for the trip to China I was definitely looking for this kind of info. And while it is true that usually it is not hard to find specific info – and probably more detailed than what I am going to write here – it still might help people doing research. Or those to scared to consider a trip to China because of language barriers and concerns about managing day to day tasks.

Sadly this post cannot shed any light on long-distance bus rides, nor metropolitan transit in other cities beside Shanghai and Beijing. However, as I traveled Beijing – Shanghai by train and plane and in the cities themselves by a few means of transportation I hope I can give a general idea what to expect.

I will start with the long-distance and then move to short-distance.

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This post could be about the huge crowds in Shanghai, or it could be about a beautiful evening spent in a exclusive restaurant on the Bund. It could even be about the nice art gallery at 3 on the Bund. Of course, in a chronoligical correct order it could be about the snaking qeue at Shanghai museum and how I skipped the visit. Or, of course, to have some fun, I could tell you how I got lost in a mall trying to find the subway. Or it can be about sushi and teaching English in China, or how I met two lovely Americans.

However, all that is for another day.

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In case you are wondering what the hell is that in the title, it is the name of a small water village near Shanghai. These are old villages that now survive in large part on the buses full of visitors coming to visit a slice of authentic village life. Visiting a water village is one of the main things one can do around Shanghai, and I was not going to miss this.

Of course, once I arrived I realised pretty quickly that the villages are maintained in their current state in order to attract visitors. The “new” villages, which are residential areas near the authentic ones are dead giveaways. Still, they are great photo opportunities.

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This short post is going to be a mere continuation of Lost in Shanghai, mostly bringing a few more pictures. Yesterday, because of the very late hour I couldn’t complete the photo album, so now this can be seen as a second part. While there are some photos from Shanghai proper, most are from the later part of the day – the trip to Pearl Tower and visiting the museum there. I hope you like it, even though there is no great story surrounding the photos.

Unfortunately at this time the WiFi works extremely slow, so I have no chance to write more. Though maybe later, or tomorrow morning the situation will improve.