Travelling - Part 2
During the second leg of my travels I left mainland China for the first time. Hong Kong felt strangely like home - we were excited to see shops like Marks & Spencer and The Body Shop and to see small similarities like the road crossings and driving on the left. It was nice to have home comforts mixed together with China. We met some of our friends from the last term and really enjoyed our time in Hong Kong. I loved it so much I would like to live there one day!
Our next stop was Taiwan. We ended up taking a long detour to get there - we got the subway to Shenzhen in China, went to our Chinese bank to sort our bank cards, took the ferry to Macau and then flew to Taipei. We woke up the morning of our flight to find out that there had been a major earthquake in Taiwan but luckily our flight was not affected. We travelled in a circle around Taiwan, from Taipei to Kenting (the southernmost point of Taiwan) and then up the East coast. We visited Sun Moon Lake, a beautiful lake where we hired bikes. In Kenting we were lucky enough to go to scuba diving and saw a lot of fish which was an amazing experience. We relaxed in the hot springs in Jiaosi and had one more night in Taipei before our flight. I found Taiwan really interesting - to hear about the history and politics, to listen to the Taiwanese accent and to see traditional characters.
After Taiwan, we spent four days in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. At first, it was strange to me as I could not understand a word that the people were saying! It was really good to see somewhere that was completely different to the places I had previously travelled. It was also weird as there were lots of other tourists there; travelling in China and Taiwan meant we were used to being some of the only tourists. We went to the Cu Chi Tunnels and learnt a lot about the Vietnam war. We originally weren't planning on going to Vietnam but as the flights were so cheap we decided to stop off.
Thailand was the last stop on our travels. We went to Phuket and relaxed by the beach. I was really looking forward to staying on one place for a period of time as I felt like I had been running around for months! We met some other scholars there and enjoyed taking it easy for a while. We had a night in Ko Phi Phi where we met almost all of the Scottish scholars. It was really surreal to see everyone in Thailand!
I was quite sad to return back to Tianjin as I had had an amazing time travelling and had seen so many interesting and beautiful places. Now it is surreal to be back in the dorms as it seems like I never left. I am excited to start the next term. Hopefully I haven't forgotten all my Chinese!
Ailsa