Mumbai, India

The last time I was in India was 1999, and it was a trip that changed my attitude about travel. Prior to that trip, I enjoyed doing things the "hard way" when we traveled - taking public transportation, staying in local hotels, and trying all the foods I came across. In 1999, I learned that there are many places in the world where you just can't doing that without being prepared to experience some really bad things: food poisoning and robbery, among them. I have a photo of myself from that trip standing in front of the Taj Mahal, and right after that photo was taken, I threw up. In a trash can. And it only got worse from there. By the end of that trip, I'd learned that you just can't approach travel so naively.

So you can imagine that it was with a bit of trepidation that I headed into this part of the trip. Doug has spent quite a lot of time in India for business, and he's had much better luck than we had then -- but he's done it by staying in very nice hotels, arranging private transportation, and being extremely picky about what he eats. So obviously, this part of the trip would fall under the "spare no expense" category.

Hong Kong and Disneyland #3

From Beijing we headed to Hong Kong, one of the world's great cities. It's been a decade since I was last in Hong Kong, but the central part of the city looked exactly the same with its lush green mountains and skyscrapers nestled against the edge of a spectacular bay. It felt astonishingly western after Japan and Beijing.

Beijing, China

There have been several times in my life when I've had the experience of traveling to a place that loomed a bit notorious in my imagination. In 1993 I spent some time in the former East Germany, just a few years after the wall came down and reunification occurred. My 1980s childhood years were filled with Reagan-era propaganda about how horrible communist states were, and of course, at the age of 21, I didn't yet understand enough about the complexities of such things to even begin to question the things I'd been taught. The reality of being there and talking to the people was incredibly eye-opening, and it was a lesson I didn't forget.

Kyoto, Japan

We're currently in Beijing, China, and I had to use a VPN to get to this blog. I don't know if China blocks all Blogspot blogs or if there's something about ours in particular that tripped the censors. Interesting...

We spent the second half of our time in Japan in the city of Kyoto, which is a beautiful place full of shrines and temples and history. I've been there once before about eight years ago, and was eager to come back again on this trip.