It’s holiday time.  Christmas is right around the corner, then New Years, and soon after we will celebrate the Chinese New Year (aka: Spring Festival).  I have loose plans for Christmas and News Years but still don’t know what to do for the Spring Festival.

This year the Chinese New Year is much earlier than usual, January 25 I think.  This means that public middle schools, like the one I work for, have a shorter vacation that ever before.  Let me explain, the term ends around January 16, as it does almost every year, but the Chinese New Year is earlier than usual, meaning there is not much time between the end of the term and the New Year.  Schools around China are using this as an excuse to start the spring term early.  In the end teachers and students have just 2 weeks for vacation compared to 3-5 weeks in previous years.  Being a foreign teacher who is not required to give exams (hallelujah!) get to skip out a bit early.  I still only have 3 weeks to travel, though the school still cannot give me definite dates.

I was always planning on going to Southeast Asia, Thailand and Laos specifically, but now I can’t decide.  Of course there are financial issues involved, since I am only a volunteer teacher I have a modest income and limited savings, savings that I would rather keep saved.  So I was thinking I could go overland into Laos and get a plane ticket for my return journey into China, cutting out one plane ticket.  However traveling overland into Laos could be really time consuming and hectic due to the holiday travel rush in China.

Ideally I’d like to go somewhere and stay for the whole holiday.  Which is why I’ve been considering just going to Beijing.  A tad similar to the China I live in now and lacking in tropical weather Beijing is still a really cool place to hangout, not to mention expensive.  Plus there has always been a part of me that thinks I should stay in China during the Chinese New Year.  Also my sister will be arriving in Beijing during the holiday and I would love to see her.  The Chinese New Year is a holiday meant to be spent with family, which is why there is such an insane number of travelers at during the holiday.  Along with my sister Beijing is also home to the closest thing I have to a family here in China, my old host family from my days as an exchange student, so it makes a lot of sense for me to go to Beijing.
Another option I’ve been contemplating is going to Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan province for awhile before heading to Beijing.  Of course if I do stay in China for the holiday I would have to wait a long time before I could do some international traveling.

I am nowhere near making a decision.