The Beijing Downtown Backpacker Hostel is a funky hostel located smack dab in the middle of Nanluoguxiang aka where all Chinese teenagers seem to hang out and consume sugary beverages. It’s a cool area if you get off the main street, as the hutongs have lots of cool alleyways to explore. We booked a private…
Given that I had a pretty good experience taking the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, we decided to take the overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing. In general, I highly recommend the Seat61.com site for information on train travel. We booked seats in a 4-berth soft sleeper car. All together, our tickets were about…
I’m taking a week-long pause in my Southeast Asia 2014 trip report to bring you a week of posts about a trip to China that I took in July 2014. During this trip, I went to Shanghai and Beijing with a friend: Shanghai to eat; Beijing mostly to see the Great Wall of China. In Shanghai, we…
While there are a number of reviews of the Singapore Airlines Private Room at Singapore Changi airport, I don’t really recall seeing many reviews of the First Class Lounge (I’ve reviewed the business class lounge in the past). Part of the reason for the dearth of reviews of the first class lounge is likely because…
I’m currently in Ubud in Bali, and whenever I’m in any Southeast Asian country, I’m on the lookout for durian. I absolutely love durian, and I don’t think it smells bad–it just smells like durian to me. After not finding much information on the internetz and following multiple false leads (probably because it’s not durian…
One of the primary reasons why I wanted to end my southeast Asia trip in Singapore was to depart Singapore in Singapore Airlines first class. Or more specifically, Suites Class, as I chose to fly back to the US via NRT and LAX instead of through ICN or HKG straight to SFO just so I…
For our time in Singapore, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay. As a category 3 IHG property, it’s 20k points a night. I don’t have much experience with IHG hotels (I guess I don’t have much experience with hotels generally), but this was the nicest and hippest Holiday Inn Express I’ve stayed…
My time in Singapore was characterized by eating, more eating, and then eating some more, to the point of a constant malaise/euphoria from being so full of delicious food. One place that might be on your eating list is Tong Heng, which is known for their egg tarts (Gary from View From the Wing wrote…
The final stop on our tour of southeast Asia was Singapore. Not going to lie–one of the main reasons why I wanted to end in Singapore was so that I could fly Singapore Suites back to the US, but Singapore is also a delicious food city, which made the couple of days we spent there…
We stayed at the Bunwin Boutique Hotel for our time in Siem Reap, and I’d be happy to return again in the future. This was a solid, affordable choice with comfortable rooms, good amenities, and eager service. The hotel offers free airport pickup and dropoff, which is done via either limo or tuk tuk. We…
