Well … it’s been a while. I must admit to getting “lazy” by just posting snippets on Facebook over the past couple (errr… few…) months rather than blogging experiences. In brief …
In December, we traveled to Kyoto, Japan, which is a truly wonderful little city – as full of shrines, big and small, as Rome is full of churches. (Our photo book of this trip is available (hopefully) here.
We also traveled back to the US, visiting Phoenix (briefly), Indiana (Jeff’s homehome), Pennsylvania (my homehome) -- where I got to love on my grand nieces and nephew, then on to Telluride, Colorado for a bit of skiing over New Years. (Jeff proposed to me in Telluride on New Years’ Eve – it’ll always be a special place for us.)
During Chinese New Year (end of January/beginning of February), we traveled to Phuket, Thailand, for a liveaboard dive trip on the Aggressor. And I can confirm that the Aggressor is all it’s cracked up to be. We had a wonderful time. Few days on the island before and after the actual dive trip – then the seven day dive trip. (Photo book of Thailand trip available here.)
In mid-February, I joined Jeff for a weekend in Singapore during the big Asia Air Show .. and we walked a bit of the city - and, of course, the zoo.
In March, Jeff took me to Hakuba, Japan for a long ski weekend. Skiing in Japan can't be compared to skiing in US-West. For one, basic ski safety concepts don't seem to apply ... people whizzed by at high speeds on every hill, including the bunny hill. But we still had a great time and, as important, we had amazing food every night!!
And, what did I do in between these trips? Well, I survived our first winter in Shanghai. And now know that as sweltering as summers are, they're better! The air pollution was pretty awful many many days, which made it "not fun" to go out and explore the city. I hibernated - a lot - while here between mid-November and mid-March - because it was just too awful outside! I tried to figure out Chinese theatres, with little success. (None of the theatre websites are in English and the Google translator isn't always accurate. Shanghai needs Flixster .. or any similar sort of thing that tells one what movies are playing at what theatre! If it exists, I can't find it - only way to know guess what's playing is to find individual theatre websites, then check out each one.) Then again, as I understand, movie theatres are far less popular here than in the states. Why pay $20+ for a theatre movie when you can go down to the local DVD store and get the same movie (albeit of varying quality) for $2?
Anyway, our favorite weekend entertainment turns out to be the Kung Fu Komedy Club - which gets some really good acts about once a month. And there are still dozens hundreds of restaurants/little neighborhoods to explore as well. Now that the weather (and air quality) is better, we're getting out every weekend again. Which is great!
Or every weekend that we're here in the city anyway. We just got back from another trip - this time, a ten-day trip to central Tibet. And that's the *real* reason I'm writing this catchup -- because I want to share much more about that trip than will fit in a Facebook comment. So ... more on Tibet coming up soon!
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