benhigham
benhigham Joined: October 15th 2009
Logged in: February 11th 2012
Logged in: February 11th 2012
Travel Blog Posts
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Vacations only go exactly as planned when you pay for an all inclusive. We experinced that first hand on our last vacation destined for Gili Tarangwan. Gili T. (as many call it) is one of 3 tourist destination islands north of the island of Lombok, neighbouring Bali. Our original schedule was as follows: take a evening train to Guangzhou, then a 1:50am plane to Singapour, wait around for 6 hours then a 3 hour flight to Bali followed by a 3 hour speed boat to Gili Tarangwan. However half way through our train ride we noticed that Helen had no passport. We had to think on our feet; the only solution we could find was if her mom took a following train to meet us in Guangzhou, otherwise Helen couldn't leave the country and our vacation ... read more
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For about half a year Helen and I had been talking about buying a car. I was originally quite scared of owning a car as drivers in Wuhan seem untrained and erratic on the road. We continued with our weekly commutes with the bus and train rides of 2 to 3 hours each way. A car started to seem more of an option as our time together every week is so limited anyway. After going to the Wuhan car show about a month ago we had skimmed down the choices to Citroyen C4, MG 3, Renault, or QQ a Chinese ultra compact car. So we finally we decided to go for a 1.3 liter standard red MG. The MG company is no longer British a Shanghai company has bought it and kept the british engeneering intact ... read more
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Sunday was the last day of our week long vacation, the first of the school year. On Friday the week before last I had the students prepare for the week long national holiday. I gave students material to think about to keep their brains working. Then I quickly left school, packed up my stuff and realized I had some time to spare so I took my backpack and went to the locale pub/dinner and met up with the principle and some of my fellow teachers for beers. I took the bus to Hankou at around 7pm missing the evening rush. We had booked our vacation transportation a little late and so the travel to our final destination, Bangkok, was round about to say the least. I met up with Helen and we began our week long ... read more
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Well we made it to the end of July and Helen and I were still waiting for the Canadian embassy's response. We were quite worried but hopeful it would all workout. We had done everything Helen and I could see possible to get her a tourist visa. The day before our plan ticket departure we got the letter from the embassy, her visa was rejected! The embassy claimed that she did not have enough personal assets and she had not traveled enough around the world. Helen has done rather extensive traveling in the 2000's and has an above average savings. Helen and I were sad about this situation as Helen had done all of the planning, getting time off work telling her friends and family of the trip and now she couldn't come. But we carried ... read more
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For our May break Helen and I decided to visit Xi'an in Shaanxi province. We left on Saturday night and took a night train into the city. The night trains can be quite comfortable as the gentle rocking of coasting on the tracks can be calming, but upon our return we had a less favorable sleep. We were traveling with Andy and Chang; Andy a fellow teacher at the school and Chang his girlfriend. The owner of the hotel chain we stayed at (called Haunting) is actually a internet millionaire who runs the Chinese airline booking site ctrip.com. On Sunday we started out by traveling around the many markets. In the afternoon we visited the Beilin Museum. There we watched some calligraphy artists and looked at some historical relics dating back to the teachings of Confucius. ... read more
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Well this past month has been fun. Getting into the new semester at the school has been interesting. My preparation time has gone way down because I am teaching the same courses as last year so my resources are already there. However there is a situation with the students registering in my department's courses. Because my depart only provides optional courses the students can drop out of the courses without much trouble. All students get overwhelmed sometimes at school and when the students' parents hear of their struggles the parents have started to have their kids drop optional courses for a free study block. So my department has much fewer students per course. This situation has happened in some of the company's other schools in China too, but next school year we will put a stop ... read more
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This was our first trip with a travel agency and Helen and I along with my fellow colegue Jennifer traveled to the Yunnan province. The tour group was by bus and although we spent a great deal of time on the bus we made it to many locations. In all we visited to 5 locations in the 6 day trip. We got in late on Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning we left Kunming for Dali of Lijiang and went to a look out point called Erhai. Then we continued to Yulong mountain on Thursday. This short mountain chain had snow capped mountains and we watched a musical demonstration of the local people the Naxi. The native people had a unique social structure in which the women we the only traditional workers in the family, collecting ... read more
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Spring festival 2011 started on the 16th and our first trip of the season, Hong Kong. Helen and I left last Wednesday and landed in the afternoon on the airport island just north of Lantau Island. From there we checked in to Panda hotel in the mainland peninsula of Kowloon. The hotel was fantastic! cheap and a caring and helpful staff. Hong Kong was somewhat what I had expected, a clean and orderly environment with common citizen courtesies missed by expats living in Wuahan. We unpacked and then we went right into the shopping! Kowloon had a range of haute couture stores to some more affordable shopping. After a couple hours we headed back to the hotel for a much needed sleep. Thursday morning we boarded the free Panda hotel bus to downtown Kowloon. From there ... read more
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This past weekend and the week before it were long weekends, ending the longest stretch without a break in the entire school year. The week before last was Christmas break and so Helen and I celebrated Xmas with friends at the school. First was a great Xmas eve dinner with a handful of friends at a Americana restaurant called Alohas located oddly enough in the french district of town. Christmas day we spent at Gail and Ian's. Gail is a esl teacher and Ian, her husband is an engineer. There we did gift exchanges through secret Santas. I scored a pair of briefs from my office secret santa and a blender at the big exchange at Gail's. Fun times and of course I got a great phone call from the family back in Edmonton as well, ... read more
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It's funny on CCTV 9, the only state run english channel they keep running inside china travel destinations for commercials and Helen and I have heard them all so much that I will frequently imitate the commercial as it plays on the tv for Helen's amusement. Anyway Wudang mountain has been the commercial for the past couple of months and coincidentally we spent the last days of September there. Wudang kung-fu originated there and the popular tourist destination is filled with ancient pathways, temples and traditions still in use today by the practicing kung-fu students who live there. We took the train there on Thursday the 30th of September. Thankfully this time we got beds, or cots, that were FAR more comfortable than the "soft" seats that we had for our last train ride. There are ... read more
