Hi my name is Andy (Andilad), and I am off to China.. yay!

This is a life long dream finally realised and with only a month to go until I leave, I have sympathy for the rabbit in the headlights, it is such an awesome prospect, it is a little overwhelming.

I am just getting my things in order through July '04, then I fly to Beijing on the 6th August.

The first four weeks I am sheltered from the drastic culture shock as I am taking two treks with Intrepid Travel one from Beijing to Hong Kong, taking in Xi'an, Chengdu and a stack of places down to HK, then the second trek leaves Hong Kong and covers the lush south west, around Guilin, Yangshou, Kunming, Lijiang, Dali..

After that, I am on my own for a month. I am not sure where/what I am going to do, I am hoping to have learnt enough in the first month, to allow me to make informed choices about my second month, which seem too hard too make now...

The wisdom I have gleaned from BootsnAll and other www resources suggests the Lonely Planet and other guides are quite out of date, as China is developing at such an accelerated rate, it seems foolhardy to make any definative plans from Blighty.. although being at the Monica end of the control freak scale, I am finding somewhat hard to get into the 'go with the flow' mentality.. and occasionally I get an overwhelming urge to book up some hostels - just in case.. but so far I have resisted...

Who is Andilad? Well, I am a 30yr old gay guy from Brighton in the UK, I am taking 2 months break from my computer programmer life. I have always had a 'thing' for China, starting years ago when I started become a little obsessed with martial arts, all my wardrobe started changing from teenage tacky t-shirts, to tacky t-shirts with dragons all over them..

I trained in Kung Fu for about 10 years and even taught it... but since developing an injury that lead to a lazy tendancy, I haven't really trainned seriously in the last 5yrs.. I am really hoping to re-kindle my passion for the art, and I will be trying to find some traditional Kung Fu teachers to train with during my time in China (if anyone has found any - please let me know)...

Anyway, I think I have rambled enough for my intro bio, I am hoping to update this blog in the next couple of weeks with pre-departure ramblings, and then keep the world up-to-date while I am on my travels.

Thanks for getting this far... :-)