"Where have you guys been, and what have you been doing?" Plus recap..

Ok, so some of you are wondering where we are and what we've been up too, since we haven't posted a lot lately. 

After we left Austria in September, we were short on cash, so we headed to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to save up our money before moving on.  We pretty much just hung around the bases, watched movies and hung out at the library for internet.  I (Brian) was pretty tired and the weather was shifting so much, we didn't feel like doing much more, even going to the library or movies was a task, since they were either across base or on another one. We spent about 3 weeks just hanging out and no sight seeing.

Next we moved on to Amsterdam. We took 2 trains and the Stena Line ferry across to get there, about an 8 hour trip. It was a nice ferry though, casino 2 movie theaters, a few bars, a child play area, etc.. Pretty much a mini-cruise liner but with a twin hull.  The day we arrived in Amsterdam, was the first day of rain according to Kristin's family (which lives all over Holland), and it pretty much rained every day at some point.  So I didn't feel to well there, so we didn't' do much but walk around a bit, see the Red Light district and visit some "coffee shops".  Of course the day we left, it stopped raining.  Really didn't do a lot or take pictures, but we did see a lot of interesting things.

After the ferry to Harwich, we headed to London.  The main reason we even went to London, is the cheap flights to China, it was more than double to fly out of Germany or The Netherlands.  We didn't do any sight seeing except for Camden Town, which some should know, that it's a must.   I felt a little better in London, but we didn't plan on seeing much and I was still a bit tired, not to mention the cost of living there is really high, seriously $4 for a bottle of water (16oz), to give you an idea.  Since it cost a lot to live, we didn't really feel like blogging a lot, and internet cafe's were a bit far from us.

We flew from London to Shanghai on Qatar Airlines, 2 planes and a 5 hour delay in Qatar's capital Doha, totaling a 20 hour flight.  Qatar airlines gave by far the best price, and definitely great service. You get juice, water, tea or soda all through the flight, they serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, good meals (free by the way), each seat has a decent size LCD tv with FREE interactive games, a huge list of recent and old movies, also free, and a lot of music, oh yea, they don't charge you $5 for the crappy headphones like other airlines.  They even give you a hot towel before your meals to clean up with.  On the second flight we even got a free travel bag (toothbrush, shampoo, eye blinds, a pair of comfy socks, and a neck pouch for your stuff. My only real complaint was the seats, they are clean and nice, but tailored for the average or below average height. I would probably use this airline again.

Now we are in Shanghai, as if you didn't get that from the previous post, and between the jet lag (remember the 20hour flight), temperature change (it's 81 degrees here, was 60 or so in London), and a slight head cold, we haven't done anything but stay in are room for 3 days.  The rooms at this hostel (Shanghai City Central Youth Hostel (UTEL)) are really nice though, and $5 a bed for a 4 bed dorm, huge beds, key card entry and a cafe that serves good food for $4 or so.  We decided to get the private room for $20/night, it has own shower/toilet, internet in the room and a TV with 69 Chinese channels and 1 English Chinese news station, oh well   Really nice rooms and staff.

So what's the goal now?  Well, we are staying here till the end of October, working on getting our Travel Permit and Tour group to goto Tibet, they are required to have, so we have to find a reliable travel agent.  After that, depending on our finances, we are taking a 2 day ferry ride to Osaka, Japan, then a bullet train to Yokohama (Tokyo) and goto the US Air Base.  Hopefully we will fly out of there to our next destination.  If we run out of money then we'll just find a flight from Shanghai to the states, probably to California.  No sturdy plans yet, just seeing what's next.  We figure we can afford to easily live in Japan for a month, and might fly out in December, no promises though.

Our main goal at the moment is Tibet and Mount Everest Base camp.  After that, we'll know what we are doing, just need some rest before we go exploring again, sorry for the lack of pictures or blog.

Brian