We keep arriving in Beijing for hours, so huge is this city. Without any orientation thanks to our weight-saving measure of traveling without a guidebook, we gaze at the big buildings sighing “so this is Beijing”. A natural urge makes us entter a coffee place that could easily serve a demanding European clientele. The internet …
We keep arriving in Beijing for hours, so huge is this city. Without any orientation thanks to our weight-saving measure of traveling without a guidebook, we gaze at the big buildings sighing “so this is Beijing”. A natural urge makes us entter a coffee place that could easily serve a demanding European clientele. The internet …
Arrive in China with a touch of old-age grandeur, by boat rather than by airplane. We take the big ferry from Incheon to Weihai (pronounced way high) and have a convenient overnight journey sleeping on a mat and munching cup-o-noodles. Upon arrival, we gaze at the diligent cranes and trucks performing the logistic necessities to …
Arrive in China with a touch of old-age grandeur, by boat rather than by airplane. We take the big ferry from Incheon to Weihai (pronounced way high) and have a convenient overnight journey sleeping on a mat and munching cup-o-noodles. Upon arrival, we gaze at the diligent cranes and trucks performing the logistic necessities to …
Chengdu, China. May 6th, 2010SQR (Sichuan Quake Relief) was founded by Peter Coff and other expats living in Chengdu immediately after the devastating 2008 earthquake. They deliver smart aid to the disaster regions.
We support SQR with a donation.
NameSichuan Quake ReliefAimMission statement: “Sichuan Quake Relief (SQR) is a non-profit, humanitarian organisation …
I seem to have flown to Korea today. For beautiful personal reasons, I take a time off from Charity Travel, with the pleasant exception of MWTV, Migrant Worker Television. We find their office, tucked away on the central Namsan hill in Seoul, through a friend of Yeon. It was founded in 2004 by migrant workers …
I seem to have flown to Korea today. For beautiful personal reasons, I take a time off from Charity Travel, with the pleasant exception of MWTV, Migrant Worker Television. We find their office, tucked away on the central Namsan hill in Seoul, through a friend of Yeon. It was founded in 2004 by migrant workers …
I must have flown to Hong Kong today. Immigration is nothing to remember and the airport train service costs 100 Hong Kong dollars. Jet set. I wish I could pen down some impressions about Hong Kong, the important port that Britain leased for 99 years because of the opium trade and has given back to …
![](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_9tUEnff_GWA/S8vFDaQhM5I/AAAAAAAAGiE/A9OtqvOH5KA/s320/P1050615.JPG"></a></div>Finally! We visit the Taj Mahal. We have booked a tourist package and a touring bus picks us up from a metro station. We drive down to Accra and have to endure a hot day of Indian tourism before we are dumped at the gate of the Taj Mahal, where they let us in and we have about forty minutes to look around. Yeon is really enjoying the building and I)
The actual tomb inside (this is the greatest monument a man has ever erected for his deceased wife) looks beautiful, and I like the decorative flower-shaped inlays, which I study for some minutes. But we have to be quick, and jump back in the bus. We will halt a few more times on the way, and they bring us home too late, without a decent apology. Once again, converting myself into a tourist is awful.There must be an internet place, the kind of thing you and I are used to: wireless connection over coffee in a well-lit designed atmosphere, no strings attached, other than the astronomous beverage prices, but we star-gazers are willing to pay’em. I read about some candidate places in a glossy online magazine and the language …
There must be an internet place, the kind of thing you and I are used to: wireless connection over coffee in a well-lit designed atmosphere, no strings attached, other than the astronomous beverage prices, but we star-gazers are willing to pay’em. I read about some candidate places in a glossy online magazine and the language …
Our host Kaushik flies to Mumbai today to give a lecture about device driver pre-installing optimization. We say goodbye and move to our other host near central Delhi. It takes us a long time, but when we finally get there we feel very welcome. A big blue backpack signalizes the presence of another couchsurfer, but …
Our host Kaushik flies to Mumbai today to give a lecture about device driver pre-installing optimization. We say goodbye and move to our other host near central Delhi. It takes us a long time, but when we finally get there we feel very welcome. A big blue backpack signalizes the presence of another couchsurfer, …
A cause. Our host knows about greenpeace and helps us find out where their office is by calling their headquarters in Bangalore. We are finally given an address near Hauz Khas, a southern suburb of Delhi. We take a minibus and find a rather sober office, something that usually makes me feel good about an …
A cause. Our host knows about greenpeace and helps us find out where their office is by calling their headquarters in Bangalore. We are finally given an address near Hauz Khas, a southern suburb of Delhi. We take a minibus and find a rather sober office, something that usually makes me feel good about an …
![](http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9tUEnff_GWA/S637Y5iA8AI/AAAAAAAAGbE/3-c8xCgN-As/s320/P1060054.JPG"></a>We arrive in Delhi only at 5pm since an accident has caused our train to be seven hours delayed. Our couchsurfer now lives in Gurgaon you see that is a satellite town south west of Delhi. An autorikshaw takes us to the Radisson hotel where we are picked up by Kaushik, a very nice guy who is still working for Microsoft but really wants to turn to magic by the end of this year. We have a great evening getting to know each other.<br><br>I recognize much of the things I read in the )