Category: Big Trip 2012

One year – so long and yet already over ;). But this would be the wrong place to complain that it’s over and be sad about it. It was a blast – what a year. It’s very hard to find the right words to summarize this extraordinary year with...

One could say the one couldn’t do a trip through Asia without stopping in Bangkok and so we made Thailand’s capital to our last stop on our amazing trip. We stayed at the iCheckInn hotel near Sukhumvit which was surprisingly nice for the little we paid. As we both...

Today Hazel and I went on a day trip to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea (DMZ). We had chosen USO as our tour operator as they are affiliated with the US Army and had a good reputation. It would turn out that it was indeed a...

After having toured the east of Korea and Jeju Island it was time for Seoul. Already on the approach to Gimpo Airport we realized what a huge city we were about to explore. In fact metropolitan Seoul with its 25 million people is the second biggest agglomeration in the...

A short one hour flight brought us to Jeju Island a few hundred kilometres south of the main Korean Peninsula. Jeju Island is a very popular with domestic and international tourists alike and we were kind of happy that it was the end of the high season and that...

A bus brought us to the town of Samcheok where we found a conveniently located motel next to the bus terminal. Once again the tourist information office was excellent and gave us a handy bus time table for the main attractions in the region – what a service! So...

Already on your flight with Korean Air from Beijing to Seoul, we started to experience the hospitality of Korea. Fantastic service – not a given in the airline industry these days. After we had arrived at Seoul’s Gimpo airport we headed straight to Chuncheon about 70 minutes east of...

Our final stop in China was its capital – Beijing. Beside looking forward to the city we were excited to met Roman, Kevin’s cousin, and Hitomi, his girlfriend. They were so kind to let us stay with them for the next week. Once again it was awesome to have...

After another great breakfast in Xiahe, it was time to leave this little gem. First, a bus brought us back to Lanzhou where we later onboarded a night train to Luoyang where we arrived a good 15 hours later. We shared our comfortable soft-sleeper compartment with a very friendly...

Leaving Xia’n to Lanzhou at 7:44 AM. We had bookedv hard seats and the train was quite full so a lot of opportunities for “people watching”. The seats were really quite a bit harder as the ones on the high speeds trains (but still bearable). The ride took a...