TravelBio

Less than a week since we flew back from Guilin we were off again…this time to Macau! What happens in Macau, stays in Macau. The City of Entertainment. Well, Macau isn’t exactly Vegas, but it is the closest thing to it in Asia. What Macau lacks in late night entertainment and debauchery, it makes up for in gambling; and I mean a lot of gambling. If you think of Vegas as the gambling capital of the world, you are mistaken. Macau has held that title—in terms of gaming revenue—since 2006. Today that revenue is over 6 times the total in Vegas! Many Vegas casinos, such as the Wynn, are also in Macau Vegas still eaks out more visitors than Macau, but far fewer people go to Vegas to gamble these days. Walk into any casino on the strip, and the average age is well over 40. Most people my age want to go to the City of Sin for partying and clubbing, not roulette and craps. Even my parents, who visit Vegas at least once a year and enjoy video poker, probably spend more money on s...

In April Joanna played tour guide to friends from England, and in May it was my turn. Justin, whom I’d met on my university internship in Canada, was invited to a wedding in Shanghai on the 20 th , and he decided to make it a two and a half week trip. Justin is a PhD student at Columbia, which means he has lots of flexibility over the summer. We’d talked about meeting up ever since our trip to Asia in 2015, and now it was finally becoming a reality. An ancient canal in Suzhou Sunday, May 21 st , the day after the wedding, I met Justin in Suzhou. Suzhou is less than an hour from Shanghai and about 2 hours by high speed train from Hangzhou. It’s known as the “Venice of China” for its numerous canals. Although it doesn’t quite live up to the name, Suzhou is worth a visit nonetheless. The city feels more historical than most in China, and with over 5 million residents, it also has the comforts of a modern, developed city (in China 5 million people means it’s just a medium-sized ...

So, where do you think this picture is? If you've read my blog, you might be able to guess. No, it's not the City of Lights. It's Hangzhou! Who'd of thought there was an entire Parisian neighborhood in China? China likes to copy...the students copy their papers from the Internet, businesses copy product designs and logos, and cities even copy architecture. Case in point, Paris in Hangzhou. A group of Chinese investors came together to build a Paris-themed real estate park known as Tianducheng (read more about it in this Huffington Post article ). Walking through the Parisian avenue is ever more creepy because it lacks a key element of Paris: people. Near the main road there are a few dozen shops, but as you walk through the area you quickly realize that hardly anyone actually lives here. There were only a few pedestrians milling around, but Joanna said when she first came, in February last year, the place was even more deserted. One reason why Paris-lite nev...