I am currently in North Eastern China for some wine and tourism related fun. I'm with Sandi and John, the owners of Arns Winery and Bob and Nancy of Montagana Estate (both premium Napa wineries). We spent the day shopping around Beijing and trying to stay indoors out of the frigid cold. Headed up to Shenyang in the evening - where the temperatures are even colder than Beijing! Today we walked around Shenyang's version of Beijing's Forbidden City … [Read more...]
The Dave and Jim Show
Jim lives in London - Dave is regularly in the UK visiting friends and sightseeing. Jim has a popular International talk show where prominent and celebrated guests often make appearances. World traveler Dave has been his most common guest so we went ahead and just changed the name of the show to: "The Dave and Jim Show". We present the show to you in short webisodes. Enjoy! Essentially Dave goes on Jim's wildly popular International travel … [Read more...]
Dropping onto Saipan
Dropped into Saipan in the dead of night - starry skies, the blackness of the sea greeted us - disturbed only by the lights emanating from this small island. I had only done cursory research before our visit here and after speaking for nearly 2 hours to my seatmate who lives here now - I wasn't really sure what to expect. He spoke of sweat shops (now extinct), high alcoholism, a hub for smuggling drugs in from China, unemployment, gambling … [Read more...]
Hanging out in China
Nice to be back in China and on Asia time - was in Beijing last year, this time around I've already re-visited Hong Kong and now in Shenzhen on way to Shanghai in a few days. Hong Kong is crazy with all its traffic and hundreds of high rise apartment buildings but so is Shenzhen! Last night was just mesmerized by all the lights driving by what seemed like never ending row after row of high rises. Cities you've hardly heard of in China have … [Read more...]
More touring in Brunei
Finally after a week I got the chance to check out Brunei's well known water villages - these are just a short ride across the river from the main part of Bandar seri Begawan. I was touring with Adam Tan, the owner of Travel Hub.com (info@travelhub.com.bn ) a local agency that offers a number of personalized tours in Brunei. The homes are on stilts (parking is underneath for each family's personal boat, if they have one) and all the homes are … [Read more...]
Touring Brunei
Today I traveled with Michael, a tour guide for for a small local travel company ( info@travelhub.com.bn ). I signed up for one of their very niche tours - sightseeing the part of Brunei that produces all of its oil and natural gas under the control of Brunei LNG. Travel Hub offers a variety of day and multi day sightseeing tours within Brunei. This particular tour may not appeal to a lot of people but oil and gas are what drive Brunei's … [Read more...]
Tour Boarding, Shanghai
Mr. Chen, the founder of TourBoarding.com recently wrote us and I would like to take this opportunity to spotlight his company. As I recently returned from Beijing I could tell there was a big marketing effort for this expo both in Beijing and in Shanghai. Due to the demand of the expo hotels are bound to be somewhat full during these months. TourBoarding is as taken from their site: "Tourboarding.com offers a new, à la carte, self-design … [Read more...]
Internet in China
Greetings from China - is interesting to see what is and isn't blocked over here. Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Youtube and other social networking sites are blocked. Having a remote server helps as I can telnet into the box and then load up any of those sites as necessary. Would be nice to capture some of the world's largest Internet market but non Chinese sites aren't visited that much...yet. Shortest blog post on DTC! … [Read more...]