A Happy New Year in Huangshan

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We wanted to hit the ground running with travelling in 2016, so on 1st January Mitch and I headed west of Hangzhou to the town of Tunxi. Nestled in the south of Anhui Province, it’s a great base to explore the surrounding area. Our plan was to visit Mount Huangshan (the Yellow Mountain) on the Saturday, but if the weather wasn’t right there are plenty of other places within easy access of Tunxi to explore. Thankfully, the weather was wonderful! We arrived on Friday evening and found our hostel, located in a very swish, more modern area of town with coffee …

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Our Chinese Christmas

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My previous post was a universal Christmas Card to you all. Now I shall tell you how we spent our Chinese Christmas. On Christmas Eve the Chinese English teachers at my school invited me out for coffee and cake in the afternoon which was really kind. Talking to them all outside of school was really relaxing and I felt like I got to know them a bit more. They treated me to a smoothie and very nice Belgium waffle. The head of English even bought me a Christmas present: reindeer gloves!

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To everyone: Merry Christmas

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  To everyone, MERRY CHRISTMAS. Wishing you a happy and peaceful Christmas. I hope this year has been a good one for you all. I hope you’ve made the most of it, taken chances, and picked yourself up after any bad times. This year I’ve realised what taking chances can mean; it leads you to places you never imagined. I wish you and your family a most wonderful festive season. Love and peace, Helen xxx

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Shanghai Shenanigans

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Hangzhou is ideally located an hour away by train from Shanghai. We left from the snazzy East Hangzhou train station. It felt more like an airport as it was very modern, full of restaurants, and even had proper boarding gates with ticket checks and security. For a mere £7 we left Hangzhou in our comfortable economy seats and arrived an hour later in Shanghai. I still can’t quite comprehend the size of the city: 23 million. That’s nearly 4 times the amount of people in Hangzhou and London. Needless to say, only being there 2 days meant we saw a …

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Celebrating Thanksgiving in China

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Being British, I have never ever celebrated Thanksgiving. So when I got a message from a fellow British expat here in China, asking a group of us if we’d like to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday I wasn’t too bothered. I told Mitch but he thought we should go, sure, we’re in China, but why not celebrate other cultures and festivals.

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Why You Should Visit Muscat, Oman

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It was only the second time I had ever been on a flight by myself before. It was my first time to the Middle East and I was off to a country I’d never heard of six months ago: Oman. I was primarily going to see Mitch, of course. Long distance relationships are surely a good reason to go to a new country! Wikipedia did a great job giving me a brief history and allowing me to find out where it was actually located. Oman is a rich country, full of oil. Mitch wanted to show me everything Muscat (the capital) …

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