BootsnAll Travel Network



Archive for the 'Blog & Blogger' Category

« Home

From Sheryl Crow’s green baby shower…

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

I joined the Stop Global Warming Virtual March today after I read a hilarious post about Sheryl Crow’s eco-friendly baby shower, saying that Sheryl, my favorite rocker, “wants to limit the use of toilet paper to one sheet per visit”. I don’t know if she was talking about using one sheet of paper after wash her hands or … 😉

Anyway, I don’t own a car in Shanghai, so I feel good at doing something stopping global warming in my daily life. My action is to get around by foot instead of bus or taxi. I was “proud” that I took train to Beijing in my recent trip instead of plane. Train is the greenest transportation in travel, according to Tom Mercer on Trains, Planes, Automobiles.

Here are some more numbers for your reference:

Total Emissions Per Vehicle

SUV (15mpg) – 2.29 lbs/mi
Average Car (25 mpg) – 1.39 lbs/mi
Prius (55 mpg) – .61 lbs/mi
Motorcycle – .57 lbs/mi
RV – 4.58 lbs/mi

Total Emissions Per Person
Average Car/Single Driver – 1.39 lbs/mi
Average Car/Family of 4 – .34 lbs/mi
Train – .32 lbs/mi
Bus – .48 lbs/mi
Plane (250 mi trip) – .85 lbs/mi**
Plane (600 mi) – .69 lbs/mi**
Plane (3500 mi) – .56 lbs/mi**



The Chinese Blogger Conference 2007 @ Beijing

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

I am in Beijing for the 3rd Annual Chinese Blogger Conference from Nov. 2 -5. I took an overnight train to Beijing. Here is the tour from Beijing Train Station to the conference venue: Tsinghua Science Park (where Google is located at.)
Beijing Train Station

Beijing Train Station

An ancient building I shot on taxi.

the main entrance to Tsinghua Science Park

The main entrance of Tsinghua Science Park

Conference sponsors and popular bloggers (the thumbnails)

The hostess

Kangos redesigned Google?

Friday, October 19th, 2007

This is just too funny that I have to foward it here, for all travler friends. Hope you enjoy it besides travel blogs and images.


A kangos Gene McKenna made “a little satirical piece about what its like to do web design in the Google Era” and was instantly getting popular around the web.

Here is his final master piece and his post-comment:
Kango: google design end

I went through the comments and a lot of people thought it is a “yahoo”. How do you think?

OK,in case you don’t know who is Kango, here is a few ways to get to know her:

Wish Our Wonderland Stay Forever!

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day
I just got back from one of the most beautiful places in China, which is called Jiuzhaigou Valley in Sichuan Province China as I planned. It is a much less well-known national park among foreginers since i didn’t see many there, though it is one of 166 UNESCO World Natural Heritages in the world according to the number on wikipedia, and one of 45 in Asia Pacific. I have to say this is a MUST visit place in China if you want to get out of city to see the natual beauty of China.

IMGP2337.JPG

Different from the United States, China has a very short history in running and managing national park. But Jiuzhaigou Valley is a well managed and kept place where normal gas-consuming vehicles were banned in the park. To make up the high maintenance cost, visitors have to pay 400RMB (more than $50) / visit (2 days) per person in peak season from March to November. So the cost for a 4-person family per visit is about 10 times of that for a national park in US ($20-$25 admission fee/vehicle). It is the cost for a sustainable travel environment, and it will be justified.

As a Chinese, I am very glad to see such a wonderland is still in a good shape. My simple wish for Blog Action Day 2007 is that this fairy place will stay forever for people from all over the world to visit and share.

IMGP2432.JPG

claim my blog

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

Technorati Profile

A survey: what’s your pain in planning a vacation?

Monday, September 24th, 2007

I made phone calls like crazy yesterday afternoon, trying to book hotel rooms for my coming vacation to Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan, China.

I have spent quite some time research what to do in our destinations during the weekend and was frustrated — since I got a lot of repeated but either useless or out-of-date (You know, everything changes so fast in China) information about the destinaion from search engine (google or baidu). Anyway, I finally set our itinerary and am ready to book hotel rooms. I found our most desired hotel was fully booked. Of course, I can still find a place, a nice place to stay if i am willing to pay RMB 600/night when I can get one for RMB 180 just 2 days’ ago.

In the whole planning process, I spent way too much time deciding where to go and what to do. I want to see the fall foliage, but people have different opinions about where and when. I hope I have a super computer or a super data mining machine to dig all relavant data out for me. Unfortunately, I don’t.

I would like to do a light survey about: what’s your most difficult part in planning a vacation? How do you solve it?

For me, it is to decide which few attraction points to see the most beautiful natural scences in limited time. I will:

1) search google and baidu (in Chinese),

2) go to forum and ask questions (but got almost 0 repsonds),

3) search for travel blogs in either English or Chinese (which need a lot of time to read and filter the information).

Favorite Travel Blogs (Part II)

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

I picked 5 of my favorite travel blogs during Blog Day 2007. I ran into Rambling Traveler’ s Favorite Travel Blogs post today and found a few travel blogs in the list are also my recent faves too. Following the rule, I would like to nominate a travel blog i like: The Daily Transit, a travel reporter on bike.

___________Start Copying Here__________

The Originals

___________End Copying Here__________

Blog Day 2007- my travel blog discovery

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Since the mission of “blog day 2007” is to get new blogs and bloggers know each other. I decided to participate it and share my discovery of 5 new blogs dedicated to travel experiences. Why? Here my three reasons:

  1. People don’t write a travel blog post if there is no story on the road. So, if there is a blog, there are stories which we will love or not. Who cares?
  2. People show photos of their family vacations, romantic getaways or guy adventures… and I love photos.
  3. People create maps for us to spot where have they been, who won’t love this.

Blog Day 2007

Before jumping into the link love generating game, let’s refresh the rules:

    1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
    2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2007
    3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
    4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
    5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link:
      http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2007 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

1. Alexs Travel Blog : Alexs works in a media company in Brighton. He has been to Australia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Maldives, Serre Chevalier, Thailand, not a lot, but he has 1622 photos on this travel blog site. He showed us the eastern toilet that he shot in China, skydiving adventures and some more beautiful photos about Australia.

2. Viator Travel Blog: This is a blog contributed by passionate traveler and “online travel addicts”. Each post in this blog is very well organized and rich in up-to-date tips. It is a helpful research platform if you are planning to visit any of the destinations featured in the site.

3. Shu-wu’s Travel Blog: This is a very very very new blog, 2 months’ old? Wu (blogger) is my friend and when she sent me the link today, it caught my eye balls instantly with the journalizing photos and log. Who wants to climb Kilimanjaro too? ME! And you?

4. Kango Blog: “Kango…know and then go!” Leaned from the “About Us“, one of the authors Elliott Ng was also a Kilimanjaro person. hmmm… In fact, I like the map ideas on this blog and have been followed it for a while. It looks like Kango.com has some interesting idea in online travel area. I have signed up for this private beta invitation, hope to get some scoop the first time it launches…

5. 耀輝的旅行與攝影筆記 (Translation: Yaohui’s Travel and Photography Blog): If you don’t read Chinese, it is Okay. Since you won’t read the text anyway with some many fantastic photos on the screen. Yaohui (the blogger) was an IT manager in Taiwan, but he quitted his job in 2000 to pursuit his dreams on travel and photography. Since then, he has been traveled around the world.

Ok, Enjoy!