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This has been a while in coming, and I apologize for that...but I hope that you find it worth the wait.  Our China trip was quite the adventure, an extremely good adventure, but an adventure none the less.  We set off from Incheon airport in South Korea, in the morning of the 26th of April, and arrived in Beijing around noon.  After claiming our bags at the airport, we ventured forth and found ourselves abandoned in the airport, with no sign of our tour guide anywhere.  After a harrowing 10 minutes or so he finally found us, and we quickly learnt the unthinkable had happened.

We were on a Korean tour, where everything was in Korea, all the time.  And Korean's like to get their money's worth, so when we were on the bus the Chinese guide (you have your guide from the tour company in Korea, and a different Chinese guide in each city from the Chinese tour board) spoke none stop in a loud booming voice over the speaker system.  I was able to tune it out effectively, but my parents found it really annoying.  Our Korean guide, who was very nice, told us later that Koreans want the translator translating for them all the time, where as European tours want the guide to tell them where they are going, and then shut up and let them enjoy the view until they get somewhere, and then tell them what they are looking at and why.  So we tried to figure out what to do and had many calls back to Korea, and by mid afternoon things had been figured out.  There was a misunderstanding between what the travel agent had said and what we had understood, because both my parents and myself had asked if the tour was in English or Korean.  The agent had said, "The guide speaks English," meaning that the guide CAN speak English (although only a little) not that the tour was in English.  But once we got over the initial shock of it and settled in, it was really good.

We probably got to see more things on the Korean tour compared to European tours because it was really organized, and very precise to go from place to place to place...with only short stops.  Europeans probably would have spent more time at each location.  We know, for sure, that the Europeans rarely ever go to gorge we went to after the Great Wall.  It was a really good trip in the end.  Our schedule was as follows: Monday to Wednesday, in around Beijing; Wednesday, around noon, flight to Xi'an; rest of Wednesday to Thursday night, in and around Xi'an (heaviest polluted city in China, and that's saying something); Thursday night, flight to Guilin; Friday in and around Guilin; Friday night, late flight back to Beijing; and finally, Saturday, a morning flight back to Korea.

The only bad part about China was the pollution, it is hard to describe.  The best picture of it in the Xi'an section, with the bell tower.  In some areas, you can't see more than a couple kilometres because of the pollution, it's really that bad.  The Terracotta warrior dig site was suppose to be at the foot of a mountain.  We got there in the morning and didn't know what our book was talking about, because there was nary a mountain to be seen, but when we were leaving and the temperature had risen and burned some of the pollution off, we could see the outline of a mountain a couple kilometres off.  Coming from Canada, it's hard to imagine this kind of pollution, and it's the one thing I really miss.  Clean fresh air...I actually find it hard to remember what it's like to look out and be able to see clearly until the horizon fades away, instead of the view fading into haze.  I also miss having space, and being able to go somewhere where there aren't people already.  China was so busy...all of the time.  If I ever came back to Asia, and I'm not saying that I have any plans to, but if I did, I think I would look into China...but I would have to decide if I could survive the pollution for that long.

And now, on with the galleries.

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