I had the privilege of actually traveling to China a few weeks ago — it was for business. My first time. For a guy who “loves” to travel, I thought it was odd that I’ve never been to China. My time in China was brief and I really got to see two cities; Beijing and Shanghai. I did, however, reconnect with a lot of people that I knew from a long time ago who are currently working in China. And that made the trip great.
My new travel strategy is to hit large developing countries while I’m young — namely the BRIC countries.
BRIC = Brazil, Russia, India, & China.
One down and three to go. And as for rest of the developed world, I’ll see them in a wheel chair on a senior cruise later on in life.
I’ll slowly start to post about my trip. This was basically a business trip, so the accommodations, people, and tenor are very different from my earlier backpacking/hostel days. There are plenty of very adventurous 20-somethings out there running around doing what I once did a long time ago.
My whole philosophy of travel has evolved has I started using different guide books — I no longer use the Let’s Go! and Open Road books, which are fantastic books for young budget minded folk that don’t mind bumping into a lot of other young post-collegy expats.
I’m currently using a mix of Lonely Planet and The Rough Guide for my travels. The Lonely Planet has great downloadable chapters in PDF format — I downloaded the sections on Beijing and Shanghai. And I purchased The Rough Guide to China because it was the most current edition out there. I like the two guides because they mention the really upscale accommodations with the budget ones — truly giving one a choice.
I’ve not graduated to Fodor’s or Frommer’s quite yet. Give me about 10 more years.
More posts to follow . . .
