Planning for Asia

Flick and I have talked about going on a longer trip with Gabe for a while now. We figure he's still pretty portable (i.e. still being breast-fed) and having my parents accompany us will give us an extra set of hands to help take care of him. Flick has never been to Asia, my Dad hasn't been back in a while, and none of us have ever been to Shanghai.

Over the last few weeks, we've been researching and planning and booking. Some sites that have been helpful:

• Agoda - Discount hotel booking, focused on Asia. Part of Priceline. Has some traveller reviews too, but not as many as TripAdvisor.
• Expedia.ca - Allows you to build your own discounted travel package, e.g. flight + hotel
• TripAdvisor - Huge list of traveller reviews from around the world. Good for verifying recommendations.

We've now got almost all the hotels and flights booked, so the countdown begins. While we're gone, we won't be updating our baby blog nor my baking one. Hopefully, we'll be able to get around the Golden Shield (aka Great Firewall of China) and post here or on my Flickr stream, either via a mail-to-blog service or tunnelling through a VPN.

Meanwhile, here are some links to pictures and stories from China:

• What Are Young Chinese Thinking About? (chinaSMACK)
• China: daily life (The Big Picture, boston.com)
• China: Daily Life Sept. 2011 (The Big Picture, boston.com)