Travelling
Harbin
This past 9 weeks have been a whirlwind of traveling and fun! As soon as school finished we hopped on an 18-hour-long sleeper train to Harbin for the snow and ice festival. We got to play on the frozen river and watch people use chainsaws to cut through the ice, while the music intro to Frozen was playing in our heads. There was ice skating and ice slides and ice sculptures and cutesy wee ice creams in the shape of ice castles. We also made friends with lots of cool people at our hostel where the hosts were very friendly and invited us to join their hotpot. We were able to understand and communicate reasonably well despite their extremely northern accent, and learnt some Northern dialect! After returning from Harbin it wasn’t long until Chinese new year.
Chinese new year
There were lots of special events/promotions surrounding new year and the fireworks on the night were plentiful, however as it is a family-oriented holiday people were at home with their families. It would be as if a Chinese person came to Scotland for Christmas. The streets are fairly empty as people are spending time eating good food and practicing traditions with their families. We all had a great time as we went out for dinner and came back to a movie night. The uni hosted a new year’s event that lasted a few hours with some fun activities involving prizes. We got to watch some cultural dances and singing too!
Chongqing and Chengdu
After this short break in Tianjin I was on the move again to Chongqing where I met with Kima and their visiting friend. We explored Chongqing which is an absolutely gorgeous city famous for its monorail that goes through a building. Some areas of the city are quite disorientating as the whole place is built on a mountain. Sometimes you’d think you were walking on the base ground only to cross a bridge into the 22nd floor of a hotel, or peek over a fence and find a longgggg way down. We made some great friends in our hostel who we later met up with again in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. We ate our fair share of Sichuan-pepper filled food here and some excellent blackmail material was collected; a snap of a clearly nonchalant Kima with streaming eyes, running nose and an expression of panic while eating the infamous Sichuan hotpot. If I include the photo I don’t think Kima would let me live long enough to write the next blog, so I’ll spare them the embarrassment. However, whatever you’re imagining - it was worse!
LeShan
After this we moved on to Leshan. This was our last stop of the China tour where we got to see the LeShan giant Buddha; the biggest buddha in the world! While in the line we were talking to some very interesting people. In front of us was a Tibetan Yogi, who we added on WeChat and who told us about his culture and Buddhism. Behind us was a member of the Chinese Communist Party who asked us our country’s views on Taiwan and communism. He was very friendly and lent us his umbrella. Genuinely curious and good to chat with, but It was certainly an interesting 2.5 hour wait between the two of them! We enjoyed a wonderful 30-hour long hard-seated train home to get back in time for our flight to Thailand.
Thailand
After one sleep, Mati, Ruby and I were on the road together exploring Bangkok and Krabi. We enjoyed river tours in Bangkok, and rainforest tours in Krabi along with Island hopping to Phi Phi island and chicken island to name a few. We all wound up incredibly burnt in the 34 degree weather but we were happy all the same. Tianjin had been so cold it was amazing to get a bit of heat. My favourite night of the trip was when we were in the sea after watching the pink sunset, and you could see flashes of lightning over the hills in the distance. Krabi is definitely one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life. Now everyone is back on campus, we've all just been catching up on each other's travels and prepping hard for classes to start back.
