Hong Kong Queuey (Part Two-ey)

The skyline of one of the world’s great mega-cities spread out before me and away into the distance. The views from Victoria Peak were staggering, and despite the heavy tourist traffic on the tram coming up, the trail around the peak was virtually deserted which suited me just fine. After a few hours ambling around, […]

Harbin(ger) of doom! (final part)

The minibus pulled up at a nondescript junction of a duel carriageway and the driver motioned for everyone to disembark. In both directions all I could see were snow covered fields and road, with the exception of the huge billboard marking the turning for Sun Island pointing back the direction we’d just come. As the […]

Harbin(ger) of doom, part 2

Tired, cold, sick and deflated. After being comprehensively defeated by the cold on the previous two days I was staring defeat in the face for the first time in my travels in China. After a second night of virtually no sleep in my boiling hot, windowless hotel room the thought of going out and facing […]

Nobody should ever get that excited about BBQ sauce…..

PAYDAY!! It’s 11 months now since I handed in my notice at and walked away from my old job to start off on my ‘adventures’ and so when my first payday in nearly a year came around last week, a celebration of some description was obviously in order! That celebration took the form of a […]

My old enemy…..stairs.

I’m now 5 weeks and 80 additional working hours into the lesson planning project mentioned in my last post which has me effectively shackled to the desk and so I decided that for my next couple of days off I was in need of some serious leg-stretching exercise! Thankfully Ruian gladly provides in that respect […]

Wonderful West Lake

Having dealt with British Rail on a bank holiday weekend in the past I was expecting the worst. On the first day of ‘Golden week’, with almost half of China’s population on the move and an estimated 11 million people headed for the same city as us,  surely the train was going to be a […]

Madness, madness, they call it madness…..

So tomorrow is ‘national day’ in China, a universally celebrated public holiday commemorating the founding of the Communist party and marking the start of 4 days public vacation. In keeping with the way things are done in China, they go big. When the holiday comes around, the cities shut down & everyone heads out either […]

You can take the boy out of Dublin Gospel Choir but……

Singing in Chinese is hard. Especially when you don’t speak Chinese your singing to an all-Chinese audience of Rai’an’s movers, shaker’s & bigwigs And so as I was ‘encouraged’ out onto the stage hand-in-hand with Camille, a 50-something long-time Chinese student of King’s, in front of a few hundred potential new clients at the new […]

0-100 in 36 hours

The twisted metal and shrapnel surrounding the tunnel entrance didn’t do anything to allay my fears. I was already convinced the coach driver had decided to end it all and take us with him such was the nature of his ‘driving’ (think how you drive playing GTA after you’ve come home from the pub drunk) […]