Huangshan!

I'm pretty excited because I just booked a trip to 黄山 (Huangshan, or "Yellow Mountain"). It's an extremely popular tourist attraction located in Anhui provice. Ever since I got to Shanghai, people have been going on and on about Huangshan, saying that if I only went to one place, that should be it. And I'd been feeling a bit complacent since returning from the US last month, in that I hadn't done much (okay, any) travelling outside of Shanghai for about two months.

Since the best way to get me to do something is to commit to it in advance (as opposed to having a spur-of-the-moment trip come up), I decided to book a flight for early August. I just paid the courier, so the trip is set!

I plan to fly there on Friday August 8th, spend the night in Tunxi, climb the mountain on Saturday, spend a night on top, and then fly back to Shanghai on Sunday night. The PVG --> TXN leg takes only an hour, which is perfect.

Rest assured there will be plenty of pictures taken :-)

Other trips I want to take (I'm certainly not going to get to do all of them):

• Osaka/Kyoto - I decided to go here instead of Tokyo. I don't feel a strong urge to see yet another crazy large congested city with tons of neon and other shit going on. I can see that just by leaving my apartment :-) Luckily, the Orix Buffaloes play in Osaka, and the Hanshin Tigers play in Nishinomiya :-) The baseball season is running out though, so I better stop slacking and book this trip before too long.
  
• Hong Kong and/or Taiwan - A given, I suppose, but to be quite honest, I'm not feeling much of a pull towards either of these places.
• Chengdu - Probably not a good idea now, unfortunately.
  
• Putuoshan.
  
• Luoyang - For the Longmen Caves.
• Yunnan - For Tiger Leaping Gorge.
• Yangshuo.
  

Again, there's no way I'll get to do all of these -- but having a list is nice.