The Harbin Years

After unsuccessfully spending a summer looking for a job in London, I received an offer from a Chinese university to teach English in Harbin. I didn´t hesitate, I passed the selection and accepted the challenge, even though I didn´t know anything about the city and I hadn`t even planned to move to China. The job hunt in London had left me broke, even though I spent most of the time crashing in other people's couches. I was also a bit disappointed as I had put a lot of illusion, effort and money in the quest of trying to settle in England; therefore, having the chance to move to China for teaching was a dream I had never dared to have.
The few days in there were awkward, but I soon made new friends who turned my experience into an awesome one. The cultural shock became a two-year awesome party and I enjoyed the food, the places and the people. As my university offered housing to its workers, I had the chance to save a lot of money so during my first holiday break I took a two-months trip around Asia. I flew to Nanning, a southern Chinese province bordering Vietnam, where I got my visa and from where I took a bus to Hanoi: I can still feel the chills of that moment when you start the most awesome trip of your life. I enjoyed the street food, visited Halong Bay in a rip-off tour and then continued travelling further south, all the way to Saigon through tiny villages and exploring the countryside. Then I took a tour through the Mekong Delta to Cambodja where I was left speechless by the awesomeness of the Angkor Temples and lost faith in humanity after visiting the terrifying killing fields. But the trip didn´t stop there and I was cheered up again by the beat of the incredible city of Bangkok, which I reached by bus from Phnom Penh, and other neighbouring villages filled with ruins of ancient kingdoms; before, I had spent a couple days chilling in the paradisiacal beaches of Sihanoukville, a common destination for Western backpackers.
I spent a week in Thailand, as I still had the plan to visit Laos, and was left with the impression that there was too much left to see. The same feeling hit me in Laos, where I spend another week to visit Luang Prabang and Vientiane. I was overwhelmed by the impact of Buddhism in the city, the beauty of the temples and the kindness of the people. From Vientiane I flew back to Harbin, from the eternal summer back to the cold winter of the capital city of Heilongjang, wishing that some day I would have the chance to go back.