Tag Archives: China

Monks and their Cell Phones

At Monk Chat in Chiang Mai, the monks were much more interested in getting a photo of CAM than of BigB. It turns out that BigB just had to wait for his moment of glory: these monks in Labrang Monastery, China couldn’t get enough of his freckles and blue eyes.

Head on over to DeliciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

Like what you’ve read and interested in reading more? Subscribe to the WanderMom rss feed, follow me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Information on traveling to China with Children.

Related Posts

[catlist tags=China]

Share and Enjoy

The End Of The Ming Great Wall

Leave a reply

We took another train (well, two actually) on our quest to get from Xiahe onto the Silk Road proper. We spent a brief night in Zhangye – where Marco Polo lounged for a year – and met one lone other Western traveler braving the vagaries of the Chinese train system on the platform. He left us to our own devices on the train – possibly because my children scared him.

Continue reading →

Share and Enjoy

Labrang Monastery and Little Lhasa

Leave a reply

We arrived in Xiahe on Mother’s Day. Given that we left Beijing at 6am, traveled by plane, bus and then another bus to get to this remote town on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau – and arrived before dark – I’d say this ranks as a pretty good Mother’s Day

Continue reading →

Share and Enjoy

The Great Wall Of China

2 Replies

Once you heard we were going to visit China you knew there’d be a Great Wall photo (or twenty). Let’s just get this over and done with, shall we?

We opted to take a tour all the way out to Simatai – a three hour drive from Beijing – to hike the Great Wall. It was a 10k hike along a less-touristed part of the Wall (the drive being pretty de-motivating for most people) and I thought it was spectacular. It was everything I imagined the Great Wall would be: a crenellated medieval wall in a remote, mountainous part of China. Murph wasn’t so sure that it was worth the effort – it’s just as well that I do most of our planning.

That small black spot near the front of the picture is BigB, marching off into the distance. Pretty cool photo, eh?

This is a gratuitous “in case you were jealous” photo. The hike was only 10k but it was pretty strenuous with some fairly steep sections and a lot of crumbling brick – but it was still worth it.

Related Posts
[catlist tag=China numberposts=5]

Head on over to DeliciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

Like what you’ve read and interested in reading more? Subscribe to the WanderMom rss feed, follow me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Information on traveling to China with Children.

Related Posts

[catlist tags=China]

Share and Enjoy

School In Beijing

Leave a reply

We’ve all had our ups and downs during this trip but just around our 7-month anniversary BigB’s downs were getting longer and more frequent. My social child was starving for kid company.

Continue reading →

Share and Enjoy

Heavenly Temple Of Heaven

Leave a reply

Visiting China with children and not going to Beijing would be wrong. Visiting Beijing and not going to see the Temple of Heaven would be silly.

It seemed like a good idea to be in Beijing for the May 1st holiday until I went looking for accommodation. The YHA/Hosteling International hostel I’d chosen for us was full. All the hostels that had been recommended to us by other travelers were full. It was too late to change our flights, we needed somewhere to stay. I sat for an hour reading through descriptions of other budget hostels and hotels and eventually opted for the Emperor Guesthouse in the Qianmen area in central Beijing.

The guesthouse was just OK but the staff were lovely and the central location was excellent for travelers getting their bearings in a new city. This was the view from outside our door: old-style hutong buildings and more tourist kitsch than anyone could ever need. It was a good place to start our visit to this, the third Imperial City we’d been in since leaving Seattle.

Continue reading →

Share and Enjoy

The Big Crush at the Big Buddha

Leave a reply

This is the Big Buddha at Leshan. At 71 metres high and over 1,300 years old, this is one impressive statue. The problem, though, is that so many people want to oogle the stone behemoth.

We’d probably have taken the time to see the Big Buddha anyway, but we also needed to extend our Chinese visas and we’d heard that the PSB (Public Security Bureau) in Leshan was friendly and efficient. I was more than a little wary about this, our first real interaction with the Chinese state but we didn’t have much of an option we had less than a week left on our current visas. Murph, aka Mr. Laissez-Faire, said I was fretting for nothing. For our boys visas fall into the “Stuff Parents Do” category i.e. to be ignored unless they need to stand in front of an official to prove ownership of a passport.

Continue reading →

Share and Enjoy

Hiking Mt Emei in Sichuan China – Day 2

1 Reply

This is the temple where we spent the night on our 2-day hike of Mt. Emei (Emei Shan) in Sichuan, China.

The complex is pretty large and although the temple is not the most elaborate or picturesque on the mountain it did have decent rooms, a dining room and (drumroll!) hot showers. Our kids were happy just to stop.

The bathrooms deserve particular comment. They were the stinkiest that we’ve experienced not least because the water just washed the waste into a channel behind the temple where there was a nice build-up of months, maybe even years, of human waste. “Temple Toilets” is our new short-hand for the most basic and truly stinky category of facilities.

Continue reading →

Share and Enjoy

Exercising Baboons

1 Reply

We first “discovered” outdoor exercise equipment such as that in the photo above in Santiago, Chile. My kids were immediately hooked on what they refer to as big kid playground stuff. We’ve seen it in parks, playgrounds and on streets in Chile, Peru, Argentina, Thailand and now, in China.

We were walking back to our hostel in Chengdu when we came upon this set of bars and steppers. BigB and CAM (who had just been complaining about walking) dashed over and jumped on the steppers. As they pumped furiously, the little Chinese lady who’d been doing a quiet, calm and gentle work-out looked around as if seeking help from these raucous baboons.

Head on over to DeliciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

Like what you’ve read and interested in reading more? Subscribe to the WanderMom rss feed, follow me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Information on traveling to China with Children.

Related Posts

[catlist tags=China]

Share and Enjoy

Eggs, Nest, Chicken

1 Reply

In Chengdu we stopped at a western-style restaurant for dinner. As we’re traveling we do try to eat locally, especially at markets, but every so often we need to feed the kids familiar food to perk up their mood or just give them a chance to carbo-load on bread or pasta. In this case, we stopped at a little Italian restaurant called High Fly Pizza which was recommended in our Rough Guide China guidebook.

BigB ordered chicken wings which, as you can see, were presented in a uniquely Chinese way.

Head on over to WanderFood Wednesday for more travel-themed foodie photos and recipes.