Tag: Asia

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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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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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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Hangzhou Holiday Adventures (Part Two)

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We kick-started the holiday with beer, ridiculous amounts of food, McDonalds’ ‘Modern China Burger’, mooncakes, and discovering new parts of the city (Part One can be found here). The second part of the holiday had similar experiences but also a few days to chill out. One day was spent catching up on Doctor Who and finally getting Mitch into Utopia. No matter what country you live in, you still need those chilled days.

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Hangzhou Holiday Adventures (Part One)

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Despite only starting teaching 3 weeks ago, I’ve just had 12 days of holiday.  The holiday was for two reasons. The first is the Mid-Autumn festival. This festival ties in with the full moon and people view the celebration as a time to spend with family. The full moon symbolises peace and wholeness, and so it also involves eating a lot of mooncakes (not as nice as they sound). Still, I got give a box of them from the school which was very kind. The second festival a few days later is National Day: celebrating that the People’s Republic of China was founded on …

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Exploring Hangzhou’s West Lake

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Firstly – all credit to Mitch for these photos. He takes my iPhone and snaps away, sometimes for a long time and I impatiently look at my watch. I then look at said photos later and they are stunning, so, credit to him. One of the main tourist attractions in our new hometown of Hangzhou is the West Lake. A gorgeous natural lake which was made a UNESCO site in 2011. Being so beautiful means on the weekend it’s buzzing with tourists (national and international), plus locals coming to enjoy the scenery, market and restaurants.

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