Vignettes of the World
My Travel Journal
Kaiping is a county in Guangdong Province in China that is known for its people’s long history of migration abroad. Waves of migrants made it in foreign countries and returned to Kaiping rich and glorious. These successful returnees built big houses in their villages as …
Our Final Lunch in Uzbekistan at the Afsona Restaurant Afsona Restaurant is very popular in Tashkent and it is highly recommended on quite a few online platforms. We sat down for our final lunch in Uzbekistan and we were excited. But we made the wrong …
From the Minor Mosque I took the metro to arrive at the State Museum of History in Tashkent. The museum itself offers some insight into Uzbekistan’s past. If I had a choice, I might have visited this museum in Tashkent before heading off to the …
Bright and early at 6am we were back in Tashkent by train. This would be our very final day in Uzbekistan. We would be seeing some museums for this day, before we head out for our flight in the evening. The Bon! Café It was …
The Tash Khauli Palace of Khiva would be the last sightseeing that we did in Khiva before we hopped on the afternoon train for Tashkent. Khiva blessed us with another gorgeous day with a bright blue sky, echoing the turquoise mosaics that would become the …
On our last day in Dameisha, I took a walk in the Biling Hiking Trail, which is part of the Malian Mountain Country Park. I have done solo hiking in Xianggong Shan of Xingping, Guilin before. But this hiking experience is significant because I did …
As of April 2025, the Interlaken Resort in Shenzhen is permanently closed. There were those days. A few decades ago, my family took a vacation in Xiaomeisha in Shenzhen. That was when even the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant had not been built yet. In …
We strolled through more of the old town of Khiva, and came upon a little coppersmith shop. The small shop displayed many goods of interests, a humble collection of finished products and some were work-in-progress. The coppersmith was playing with some of his instruments when …
Khiva was clean, neat and windswept. We went right by the Kalta Minor to find the Orient Star Khiva Hotel, which took over the original site of the Madrassa Muhammad Aminkhan as its place of business. The construction for the Kalta Minor was never finished …
I’d be willing to offer a bag of gold in exchange for just one look at the ancient city of Khiva. This Central Asian saying speaks amply to Khiva’s historic status as one of the most beautiful and storied cities along the ancient silk road …