“Hey, it’s time to get up”. When you’ve had a 17km walk the day before and a night on a sleeper train, it’s really not what you want to hear at 4am. The next thing I knew Teddy was rousing us all from our sleep and not receiving any sort of gratitude. It was still dark outside, which to me is always a sign that you’re awake too early. After a taxi took us back to the centre of Hanoi we had a brief look around to see if any hotels would allow us to check in for the next night. [View Full Entry]

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Where to start with a non-stop week in Vietnam? I had completely forgotten how tiring it is to travel continuously in an effort to see as much of the world as possible, and we certainly didn’t waste much time sleeping whilst in Vietnam last week, seeing a lot of the country for just 6 days. Everything that could go wrong seemed to happen in the first night getting our flight and getting to our hotel. I won’t go into too much detail, but there were complications with our visas and the flight was the most turbulent and unpleasant one I’ve ever [View Full Entry]

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It feels like ages since my last entry, and now I have so much to write I have to split it all into two to make it easier to read. One of the reasons why I’m not writing so much now is that I’m very much getting into a routine in Hong Kong, and although there is still loads for me to see and do, I’m not quite experiencing the same non-stop intake of new things that I had for the first few weeks. I’m becoming more used to the Hong Kong way of life now. I’m worried that when I [View Full Entry]

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The non stop lifestyle I’ve lived since arrival doesn’t show any immediate signs of slowing. I can barely remember everything that I’ve been up to since my last entry. I did make my trip into Mong Kok for my haircut as planned and it all went okay. What’s the worst that can happen when all you want is for it to be cut short? Thankfully nobody threw acid off the roof into the crowds below on this occasion, indeed I think cases of this have dried up which is a relief for everyone. I also had the chance to buy a [View Full Entry]

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Most of the exchange students had heard a fair bit about Macau before coming to HK, with it often being compared to Las Vegas and viewed as a party place to visit. Considering it was only an hour away from Hong Kong by ferry a weekend trip was inevitable. Following an absolutely manic weekend it will suffice to say that I haven’t been disappointed. Between cities such as Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore and indeed all the prosperous up and coming cities in South East Asia, there seems to be a desire to build the most ridiculous pieces of architecture possible. Macau [View Full Entry]

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The euphoric honeymoon period where it felt like one massive holiday is beginning to die down and it’s becoming a case of settling into university life at CityU and making HK feel more like home. I’ll move chronologically and go back to last week’s holiday feeling first though and bring up our trip to Discovery Bay, on Lantau Island, last Sunday. Where I live is a fairly quiet and not so busy area. Areas in Kowloon such as Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui are absolutely manic exactly in the way you expect an over populated Asian city to be. Hong [View Full Entry]

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Where to start? I’ve been here for about 3 days now and it feels like weeks. I remember similar feelings when I arrived in India and started uni in Leeds so I imagine soon when I’m more settled in time will rush by. I’ll start by saying my flight was rubbish. I tried to watch L.A. Confidential. The headphones tried to deafen with all the gunshots and special effects at full volume whilst simultaneously trying to teach me how to lip read and guess what people were saying. After trying hopelessly to follow it all I tried in vain to sleep [View Full Entry]

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Hi again I make it almost 150 days since I wrote my first entry in Chennai, it seems like absolutely ages ago. Not much has really happened since I last wrote, I've finished off some shopping in Mamallapuram, and done some relaxing. I've given my luggage into the airport cloakroom, I've checked in online, now I'm just burning time with this afternoon, I'll be doing some shopping again, it's a way to spend time. One sour point, for some reason you can only use the airport retiring rooms whilst in transit, so despite having to check in at about 3am I [View Full Entry]

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Hey all again A fair amount's happened since my last update. Leaving Manali was quite disappointing, as it was really the last place on our travelling schedule, and there was a feeling that it was over. The 19 hour bus was comfortable enough, we had one double bed and one seat. Colin still felt a bit ill so me + Katherine took it in turns to use the bed whilst he got it for the whole journey, not that it would have made much difference, it was still bumpy and there were loads of people snoring very loudly. We didn't get [View Full Entry]

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Hi all Since last time I wrote we've moved on from Shimla. Colin was feeling up enough for the 10 hour bumpy bus so we decided to join Luke + John in Manali. The bus was pretty dire to start off with, lots of people being travel sick out of the window and leaving a lovely decoration down what had been a white bus. Thankfully the 4 of us were okay. Pretty much only one thing has happened since we arrived here, and it's got to be one of the highlights of my 5 months so far. The first day we [View Full Entry]

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