We spent two weeks in budapest, an absolutely beautiful city with a vibrant and fantastic nightlife. On top of that, there are some fantastic museums about Hungary's history, inlcuding the terror house, a museum dedicated to the memory of those who died during world war 2 nazi occupation and then soviet occupation. (pictures are not allowed to be taken inside sadly). After this, it was off back to Asia, however this time I was headed for Thailand...



So February I spent in Thailand, the first week I was there doing research on English education in Thailand for my PhD. I was completing my research at kamphaeng phet rajabhat university and it turned out to be a fantastic experience, making many new friends along the way. It was also Chinese new year, so I had a visit to the Chinese department to see how the Thai students were celebrating it.

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After this, I decided it was time to go exploring and so, for Chinese new year I got to see Spring festival in sukhothai, The Thai also celebrate spring festival and so we had the opportunity to see some performances and fire works in the historical park.

After this, it was off to bangkok to meet up with my friends from Harbin who were coming to meet us. On the way, I took a detour to a waterfall and took what I think is possibly the best picture of my life...

I call it philosophical monkey...

So, upon arriving in bangkok, we had a great time drinking, eating and running around mad. We only had 3 days there before we headed to the Islands.

and then the islands for another two relaxing weeks....

Not too long after returning to Harbin, the two friends we went to the south of Thailand with were getting married and so I had the honour of participating in a Russian Chinese wedding here in Harbin.\

And then there was my birthday where I was humbled by the fantastic gift prepared by all of my friends in Harbin;

This took up the first half of the year. (There was of course lots of studying...but no one wants to see that really...)

The second half of our year started with salsa. After being bored all summer with nothing to do and no travelling (As you can see, I had already done a lot of travelling) I decided to teach my friends at my university salsa. I used to be a teacher back home in Scotland and hadn't danced in a while.

We started off by just dancing in our university, near the library. People kept asking what we were doing and joining in, and what started off as me teaching 6 or 7 friends, become a full blown salsa business over night!

Local newspapers were coming to us for interviews, pictures were taken (big thank you to Julian Bareiro for these parts) and we decided to top the year off with a massive salsa christmas party!

And so my year came to end with me travelling to Japan to see my old friend...

So far, this year I have been to Japan, Thailand, laos...mainly relaxing though, however more on that near the end of the year.
I suppose, it is only recently 2016 in China, and so My blog is a little more fitting than previously thought haha. I hope you all enjoyed this, and I plan on getting back to writing more blogs this year. Through this I have made many friends, I even got to meet a fellow blogger in HARBIN! and I miss many of the people on here. You give me an outlet in China, where sometimes it gets lonely. We may bee worlds apart geographically speaking but it is only a click away on CD!