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My main reason for heading to Philippines was to do some diving and I was especially interested in the wreck diving since I had heard that many Japanese ships were sunk there towards the end of WWII. Although it had been 3+ years since my last dives in French Polynesia, I was fired up for some sweet wreck diving on the sunken Japanese fleet from WWII (reported to be the best wreck dives in the world).

After 2 interesting days in Macau, basking in the taste of *relative* freedom, I decided to head to Hong Kong for a few days before continuing on to the Philippines for some wreck diving (12 ships of the Japanese fleet were sunk there towards the end of WWII).

Just as I was leaving on the ferry from Macau for the short (1 hour) trip, it started to rain and got pretty stormy. By the time I arrived in HK, it had settled a bit but was still raining. I took a cab to a guest house and got stuck with a huge cab fare for rush hour that could have been saved had I known I was on Hong Kong Island and not in Kowloon across the water (I could have taken a $0.25 ferry across that would have also saved almost an hour).

I spent 2 nice day in Macau, which I found refreshingly free and peaceful (unlike the rest of China, Macau and Hong Kong are categorized as Special Administrative Regions and enjoy most of the freedoms as prior to their return to China).

Macau is a very quint island that has a very European in feel (it was originally a Portugese colony and the first immigrant settlement near China. The architecture is very impressive and there are the ruins of some anceint churches in the older section, plus a very wild casino-based nightlight (they are undergoing a transformation from small casinos, to mega-casinos and currently there are a few casinos under construction by the mega casino companies of Vegas.

I flew to Guangzhou from Tibet. The Pearl River area was fairly nice and peaceful, as it empties into the South China Sea (where it meets with Macau on the South side and Hong Kong on the North). My time there was fairly uneventful (not so amazing as Lhasa, Xi’an or Beijing) and I was starting to crave further comforts so ready to exit the mainland of China when I left on the 22nd for Macau.

So I said to the Lama, “Hey Lama, how about a little something for the effort?”? And he said, ‘No money, but on your death bed you will receive total consciousness.’? So I got that going for me…which is nice.

- Bill Murray, Caddy Shack

I have always wanted to visit Tibet, but since my decision to visit China was made very last minute (5 days before departure), I was not able to arrange a group trip (the only way one is allowed to visit Tibet at this time). So I had kind of pushed a trip there to the back of my mind and was considering other options when I heard from an Aussie that our hotel owner in Xi’an (who goes by “Jim Beam”) had government contacts and he could arrange a very last minute trip for me to go to Tibet for a mere $350 for 4 days. Initially he said he could only get me there in 3 days or so, but I have come to respect the capitalistic prowess of the Chinese and so I told him he needed to find me a trip to go the next day or else I would pass (which was somewhat a bluff) as I did not want to wait around Xi’an any longer (though it was an excellent visit) and I wanted to get on with my trip. Sure enough, within an hour Jim Beam was able to arrange me a permit with a staggered flight through the next largest city and by 6AM the next morning I was on my way.

On Monday I made it to Xi’an (home of the Terracotta Warriors and seat of the first Emperor / Qin Dynasty around 276 BC), flying out of an amazingly thick smog cover in Beijing (ringed with mountains sort of like San Bernardino) and into an even thicker smog bank in Xi’an around evening. I soon saw why the reason of all the pollution as we passed several coal-burning factories on the bus from the airport (one smoke stack was spewing flames 20 feet into the air - making it look like Mt. Doom from Mordor in LOTR).

Rather than toil on the train from Shanghai I opted for a flight to Beijing (aka Peking) and have been here since Monday, Sept 5. I found it very interesting flying over Beijing since all the suburbs for miles around were so orderly planned with apartment sub-divisions in 2-15 story buildings with 6-100 duplicate buildings surrounding each one. They sort of looked like marching soldiers all lined up in a military parade for Mao Tse Tung.

Despite the fact that my travel book was published only 2 months ago, a lot has changed already in terms of maps (both missing and added roads), and hotels/guest houses (some closed, some missing roads, etc.). I spent the first day walking around the city and switching hotels because the one I was in was in some sketchy back alley (”huatong” - there are 1000s of them here) with few lights at night and not convenient to any of the metro stations.

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