Monthly Archive for April, 2008

There’s So Much To Do In China..

As part of my preparation for my journey, I’ve been buying a few Lonely Planet books. I’ve bought Europe On A Shoestring, South East Asia On A Shoestring, Japan, and now I’ve just bought China. As preliminary research, I’ve been reading about the different places, cities, towns and destinations that seem interesting, and there are just so many places I’d like to go and see in China.

I know I want to go everywhere, but I just can’t help it. I’m trying to narrow it down to a total of two months (-ish) split into two journeys. The first will be up the east coast, visiting all the big cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, before I fly onto Japan. The second part will be going from Beijing to Lhasa overland, after I come back from Japan. The second half I’m really looking forward to, as it will involve a lot more culture, history, etc. Should be very interesting :D
If anyone has any suggestions for must-sees or must-dos in China, please leave them in the comments!

Who Wants To Buy Me This?

Okay, so who wants to buy me this? I’ve decided that this is the video camera I’ll be buying to film my journey. It records in full 1080p High Definition. It has a 120 Gb ( ! ) in-built Hard Disk, as well as a MiniSD slot, which allows for up to 10 Hours recording at full HD. The extended battery also lasts for 2 hours of continuous recording (standard battery = 1 hr 20).

When I get down to using it on the road, I shouldn’t be shooting anything longer than two to five minutes or so, unless it’s a special event, so 10 hours of full HD footage will be great. I’ll also be able to archive it and back up to DVDs and CDs since the file size for 2-5 minute clips shouldn’t be too big.

Now, speaking of videos and such, I’ve decided to video podcast my trip. I won’t be blogging/podcasting/vodcasting the same day as things happen - you’ll be getting updated about two or three weeks after the fact. This isn’t because I want to keep everyone out of the loop, this is simply because I wont have time to write/record stuff each and every day. I’ll just take one day once every so often to relax, take a break from constant traveling, and sit down and blog/edit video/clean clothes/etc. This will be my catch-up day.

The benefit of this is you will all always have something new to read/listen to/watch each day. Sometimes there’ll even be a few posts per day. Should be interesting stuff :) You’ll be getting a daily blog post, as well as podcasts and vodcasts whenever I feel like it. Maybe I’ll just do vodcasts, who knows.

My videos will kind of be like a video blog. It will be what happened in the last week/fortnight/however long, as well as little features on odd things like a local delicacy, festival, etc. I won’t be posting videos online in HD though - it’ll just take way too long to upload in internet cafes along the road. Heck, SD video will take ages. So expect a delay or two!

Finally, on top of the blogging, vlogging and podcasting, you’ll also get a full-on movie/series once it’s all done. When I finish the trip and set up in England, I’ll begin to edit all the footage I’ve got into either a feature-length documentary, or a series, depending on the amount of (interesting) footage I have. And don’t expect to see everything in my podcasts. I’ll post about (nearly) everything in my blog, but videos will skip lots of interesting things, mainly to save on length, upload times, and internet cafe bills.

So what a useless, un-interesting post that was.

Some Photos From My School Assignment

Writing A Book?

Just a quick note here before I fall asleep. I’m considering writing a book of my travels. I’ll write it as I go or maybe when I make it to the other side, I’m not sure. But it should go well with my love of writing :) Goodnight everyone!