Monthly Archives: May 2014

Trip to Vancouver / Shanghai / Shenzhen 2014

2 Replies

Well, the trip is just about over. It’s been interesting to see a lot of different things and try different foods. The oddest food I at was actually a fruit called Durian. Very hard to describe, I recommend everyone try it at least once.

I added some photos that didn’t easily fit any particular album – they are the odd things that I saw while I was in China, including a wedding shop area in the subway station below People’s Square and a lot of people trying to find their children spouses. This trip was a great experience but I’m ready to go home :).

Enjoy the pictures! Chris W.

Shenzhen and Monsoon Season 2014

Leave a reply

I have never had any experiences with monsoons. This trip brought me to Shenzhen where I had my first monsoon experience complete with flooding factories (I happened to be in the factory), river fording in a van, and flight issues. It was completely unlike any weather phenomena I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been in hard rain but it’s usually quite short in duration – I’ve never seen hard rain for hours on end. It was unreal!

Shenzhen itself has a pretty weird layout. There are mountains all over the place so it disrupts the urban sprawl and there many tall buildings all over the area in smaller conglomerations. It just means that it takes a bit longer to get different places.

Enjoy the pictures :).

Chris W.

Shanghai Glows at Night 2014

Leave a reply

Shanghai is a phenomenally interesting city. One quickly notices how everything is illuminated at night – buildings, road, trees, and so on. It goes on forever, it’s absolutely incredible! I haven’t been to many areas of China, but, from what I can tell, it’s not typical. The only other city that comes remotely close is Hong Kong; however, in typical Chinese fashion, it’s bigger, better, and brighter in Shanghai.

I decided to watch the sunset on the really tall buildings from the Bund. I took a timelapse video of the whole ordeal which can be found here: Shanghai timelapse. It’s a pretty big file (~60MB) so give it a bit to load.

Enjoy the lights :).

Chris W.

Suzhou and Zhangzhou Water Village 2014

Leave a reply

I ran over to Suzhou and Zhangzhou, just outside of Shanghai, with a tour group. Suzhou is a more laid back city and a ‘small’ city at 6mil people. The water village was pretty awesome, I’ve never seen anything like it. While very touristy, people are still using the village for their livelihood. Plenty to see, plenty to do.

Enjoy the pictures :).

Chris W.

Vancouver 2014

Leave a reply

Leaving to China from Albany is surprisingly complicated. There aren’t a lot of good flight times from Albany and it’s a lot more expensive to fly from the east coast of the US to China. So, I decided to route my trip through Vancouver and get a free afternoon in the city to run around. It was more spectacular than I thought – very beautiful, it smelled great, lots of places to eat, plenty of things to see and, of course, everyone’s very nice!

While walking around, I heard a local remark, “we finally have a nice day”. I’m glad that “nice day” happened to be when I was there!

Enjoy the pictures.

Chris W.

Albany’s Annual Tulip Festival! 2014

Leave a reply

The New York area was originally colonized by the Dutch. Given that, there’s still a lot of Dutch things happening around the area. One of those things is the annual tulip festival in Washington Park. Many thousands of tulips of many different varieties along with lots of food and other entertainment. It was a fun time!

Enjoy the pictures.

Chris W.