Now for the Spring

So now that I'm basically done with my semester of studying Chinese
in Beijing, I look to the spring to plan what I'll do. I've been
having dreams where I've been back in the US or on my way back after
studying for however long it was at the point of the dream. I always
felt disappointed that I hadn't traveled to other parts of China and
Asia, so now I'm excited to do that. I will see how good I am at just
winging it.

I won't take too much stuff, I figure clothes, a camera, and a Lonely
Planet guidebook are the essentials. I want to be contained to a
backpack, Nisha said she did it so I can do it.

2 Objectives: a. Get to Bangkok Thailand by 16 February to play in an
ultimate frisbee hat tournament.
b. get to Kunming in the south of China by April to meet my family
for a week.

So heres the plan:

Buy a plane ticket to Kunming. Kunming is the capital of Yunnan
province. Yunnan province borders Vietnam to the south. In Kunming, a
doctor friend of my dad who studied his department at MCV for a year,
Dr. Yin, will receive me (don't know if he will house me or not) and
maybe show me around Kunming/Yunnan for a little while if I desire. I
will probably save the majority of that for April when I return to
Kunming to meet my family.

From Kunming I'll hop a train down into Vietnam. From there I'll
just do whatever looks cool, the Lonely Planet basically has me
covered. Its got what do do, where stay, where to eat, etc etc. So
I'll wander down through Vietnam, then over through Cambodia or Laos,
whichever is easier, and then get to Thailand.

February 17 is a hat tournament in Bangkok, and some of the crew from
Beijing will be down for that. Looking at accommodations for the
tournament, living in Thailand should be cheap. The nice option is a
weekend at what looks like a high class hotel in a studio for $60 for
the weekend. The cheap option is a guesthouse which has various
styles of rooms, about $13/night. Its a simple place but it looks
really nice. Looks better than the guesthouse we stayed at in Hong
Kong. That place was smallllll, and outside of the rooms fairly dirty.

After the tournament I really don't know what I'll do, I'll know at
the time of course. I'll do whatever the heck I feel like and then
return to Kunming by April. I'll meet my family and we should cover a
lot of ground during that week. I don't know what Kunming is like,
but it will be fun to spend time with my family coming to China,
after having been here for a while. I'm interested to compare Kunming
to Beijing.

After they leave I would like to head north and west to Sichuan
province and Tibet. Of course Lonely Planet has my back, with various
itineraries that take you on tours from point A to B. I watched a
movie that has won some awards recently. Its called Kekexili,
Mountain Patrol. Its about these guys in Tibet that form a patrol
that goes out and tracks poachers of the diminishing Tibetan
antelope. Its a great movie with some great shots of the Tibetan
wilderness. So I said I want to go there.

If I deem that I have time, I might even head further north to
China's western border, called XinJiang province. This borders
Kazakhstan and I have a feeling its completely different than the
east here in Beijing. I've seen it in some movies, and a friend of
mine is from there. I figure I should try to see as much as I can
while I'm here. Plus my favorite restaurant here is in my school. We
call it the Muslim place, but its basically food from XinJiang
province. So yeah.

Make it back to Beijing by early May to pick up stuff I left here,
buy more stuff to take home, and catch my flight on the 15th. But I
can change the date of my flight for only $25.........

By the way, since I don't plan on taking my computer with me, I will be using a different email address.
Please send all mail to gregericksen@gmail.com. I will still check the @virginia.edu mail but I much prefer the gmail account. Thanks.