You see, the thing is this, tomorrow night after work Euphy and I will be jumping on a plane to China. Awesome! For those of you who aren't familiar with Chinese internet policies though, I must explain that this poses something of a problem. You see, China maintains a fairly substantial list of websites that they won't allow access to from within their country. This security measure is jokingly referred to as The Great Firewall of China. The major problem here is that China makes it very clearly that they have no love for Google, and Google owns Blogspot. So that leaves me in a difficult blogging predicament. I'm finally travelling this year, and I'm reviving my blog in honour of that, but possibly just in time to find that I'm completely unable to blog while I'm abroad.
The good news is that I have a Plan B and a Plan C. For those of you keeping track, that's two more plans than I usually find myself equipped with. Plan B involves using a proxy server. Without getting too technical, that would allow me to get around the Firewall while in China. I've done some research and free, anonymous proxies are abundant in China (for obvious reasons) but that doesn't entirely fill me with confidence. I have no idea how accessible and reliable these services are, so the only way I can be certain that I'll be able to get through to Blogspot is to fly to China and try it out. Fortunately that's something that I intend to do!
Now, failing that little experiment I'll still keep track of my voyage the old fashioned way - in a .txt document on my netbook. When I get home I'll be able to upload all my antiquated journal entries here for your reading enjoyment. Of course that's a bit of a lackluster Plan C, and I'll be the first to admit that. By the time I'm home it won't be nearly as exciting to read about what my exploits WERE. Also I'll be meeting up with a number of the people who will be reading this blog and regaling them with tales of my adventures (ad nauseum) anyway. So I'll be focusing on getting Plan B working as quickly as possible.
As I'm sure you can all imagine I'm getting pretty wound up at this point. I kept waking up last night thinking that it was Tuesday and almost time to go. If I get any sleep at all tonight it will be a small miracle.
For those of you who are interested in keeping track of where I'm at, here's a breakdown of our flight schedule:
- October 3
- Leave Toronto at 1:40 A.M.
- October 4
- Arrive Hong Kong at 5:00 A.M. (local time)
- Leave Hong Kong at 9:00 A.M.
- Arrive Beijing at 12:15 P.M.
- October 11
- Leave Beijing at 8:05 A.M.
- Arrive Shanghai at 10:15 A.M.
- October 14
- Leave Shanghai at 9:45 A.M.
- Arrive Hong Kong at 12:25 P.M.
- Take ferry to Zhuhai
- October 21
- Ferry back to Hong Kong
- October 22
- Leave Hong Kong at 5:05 P.M.
- Arrive Toronto at 8:20 P.M.
And that's it! How do you like that first flight? Leave on one day, arrive the next day. The joys of crossing the International Dateline. You'll notice that provides an equally bizarre day on the way home too, with a 15-hour flight culminating in slightly over 3 elapsed hours. I'm sure that will do wonderful things to my brain.
We're joining a tour group for our time in Beijing, and then staying with family for our time in Shanghai and Zhuhai. So the Beijing leg of the trip will be very structured and organized, but after that we'll be much more free to do things at our own pace. I'm quite keen on having a bit of local insight for our few days in Shanghai. It's a rare treat when you can spend time in an unfamiliar city with people who really know it well.
Okay, I'll leave it at that for now, and I'll do my best to check in one more time tomorrow before we get on the flight. After that it's anyone's guess about how well my blogging will go, but with any luck I'll have lots of updates for you.
Sleep tight my friends!
1 comment:
Have fun, and don't worry too much about losing sleep before your trip, jet lag will screw you either way.
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