If you’re visiting Shaxi, China, you might notice that there’s a very specific fashion trend for women. You must wear a hat. And not just any old hat; my baseball cap with a band logo simply would not do. So here’s my special guide on how to be chic in Shaxi!
So you’re in Beijing, and you’ve seen all the highlights. Now what? Easy: go to Dongyue Temple. At first it looks like any other, but once you start exploring the 76 departments of Taoist justice you’ll be captivated, bewildered, and terrified at what might happen when your own judgment day comes.
“Go, go!” my guide urged me, “join in, take pictures!” “But it’s a funeral” I said, hesitating, “I can’t take pictures at a funeral!” And yet I did. You just don’t go crashing funerals where I come from. In my culture funerals are generally sad, serious affairs and while the general public is usually able to attend, you normally wouldn’t go to the ceremony for a complete stranger. And if you did, you would never take pictures like a gawking tourist.
I had arrived in Shaxi the previous evening, and my timing was impeccable. Today was Friday, market day. Shaxi has not only its main market in the centre of town, but also just across the river you’ll find the animal market, where locals buy and sell their horses, pigs, cows, and goats.
As I got off the bus at Dambatenne, I got a warning. ‘Careful’, the driver said, ‘yesterday two person die.’ What? ‘Yes,’ he said, indicating lightning with his hands and pointing up the hill, ‘Big storm. Two are die.’ It’s true that the previous afternoon there had been a big storm in…
Any visit to Tibet is full, and I mean full, of visits to monasteries. During the 11 days I spent in Tibet I spent hour upon hour wandering through ancient dark halls scented with incense and old wood, walking over creaking timber floors and looking at imposing statues behind dusty glass. Sera…
As the year came to an end, I thought about doing a ‘Highlights of 2014’ post. I even made a list. But while I have had an incredible year of travel, I also realized that I’ve been too busy/lazy/disorganized/unmotivated and I haven’t actually written blog posts about many of those highlights, and to try to…
I have a friend who hates giant pandas. And I don’t mean she just kinda dislikes them; no, she actively HATES them. But how could anyone hate this gorgeous face? It’s something to do with pandas being an evolutionary dead end, useless creatures that can only subsist on an extremely limited…
When I’m trying to choose where to travel to next, I don’t often pick somewhere that I’ve already been. There are so many places to explore, my list keeps getting longer and longer, so with such little time and money, going back to a destination seems like a waste. Why not spend that time and…
“Oh crap crap crap crap crap….” was going through my head as I lost my footing and swung into the water pouring over the cliff face. I was dangling 20 metres above the river, with water relentlessly pounding down on my head from above. “Must…get…out…of…water……..need…to…breathe!” And that is why it was the scariest day…