tourism Archives - Ryan McLaughlin

Hainan Tropical Garden of Wild Flora and Fauna; a.k.a. Haikou’s other zoo

To kick off 2013 (Happy New Year BTW), we headed just outside of Haikou proper to another Haikou zoo yesterday (map). As I’ve said before, I’m always apprehensive about going to Chinese zoos, as they are virtually without exception terribly organized and maintained. The Haikou zoo downtown is a spot-on example of this — if …

January 2, 2013

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A trip to Haikou Zoo

For the last few weeks Maggie’s been suggesting we take Casey to the Haikou zoo. I have deeply mixed feelings about zoos. Like the ROM for history, trips when I was a child to the Toronto Zoo instilled in me a great sense of wonder and a love for animals. On the same coin, I …

November 29, 2011

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My ChinaTravel.net Feature on Suzhou

A while back I was approached by the fine folks at ChinaTravel.net, an English-language travel site about China that is “editorially independent” but strongly affiliated with Ctrip.com — one of China’s largest online travel booking Web sites. The site’s editors wanted me to put together a summary article on “my Suzhou”, and as of last …

May 4, 2009

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Air travel just doesn’t fly anymore

Aside from family car trips, my first real travels started on a train. I was 11 years old and heading to Montreal from Niagara with just my best friend. We were going to visit his grandmother and meet up with his father, who would then drive us out to New Brunswick on Canada’s East Coast. …

August 10, 2008

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