Off the beaten China path? Day 30 of our southeast Asia odyssey

It's funny, because it's all relative. I mean, anyone who has traveled extensively in China would laugh at the idea that Brian and I got off the beaten path there on our recent travels. But compared to, quite frankly, the vast majority of people we know, we have now seen more of China than they have seen or might ever see. Weird to think about that.

Anyway, January 23rd was our last full day in Guangzhou, bringing our central-south China whirlwind to an end. Some of my overall impressions of our two January weeks in China:

*What the hell did I just eat?


*Despite all the naysayers and the lack of train ticket availability, we were quite happy to have been there for part of the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival, particularly the happy frenzies of blocked-off-to-cars street parties and lots of dragons everywhere.

*I'm really, really, really sick of being cold, in that miserably gray cool-but-not-freezing way, with no central heat anywhere.

*Woo-hoo to Wuhan! (Perhaps not coincidentally, the one place we slept in a warm hotel room.)

*There's nothing like reading a book about the Yangtze River while in a boat cruising down the Yangtze River.

*I am determined to learn and conquer this language. Maybe more than one of them, as I was kind of diggint the Cantonese more than the Mandarin at the end  of our trip. One of the main reasons I consider taking an English teaching job in China is so I can have a go at really learning to speak some sort of Chinese language.