6 replies to this topic

[hannibal]

So my graduate school is planning a trip to China for one of our business classes. Iam not sure if I could handle the trip, I never been on a plane, and dont know how ada China is. Has anyone ever been to China? Also looking for advice. Thanks.

[Tetracyclone]

Your school's travel organizer should help you with every step of knowing ahead of time what the facilities and situation will be. All depends on where they go and how. The University should require their travel agency to accommodate and prepare ahead of time, but you can still be sure of meeting many inaccessible situations. Are you small enough that classmates can carry you around, up stairs and such, if it is required? Most bathrooms will have annoying thresholds of an inch to 3 inches. The doors will often be too narrow to enter with a chair. If you can stand and walk a few steps you will do fine with a bit of help. If not, I would not go unless you have at least 3 classmates who WANT to help you get around. You would need two of them at a time frequently.

You will have to know the trip plans in detail, and I would be glad to help you make judgements about them. The members from Thailand can also be most helpful. Go if you can! travel is one of the best perks of life on Earth.

[hannibal]

Thanks for the reply. I am pretty small but don't know if I could trust my classmates. The classes are primary online. I cant stand and walk to the bath room on my own. I will talk to the coordinator and see what they say. I am also still recovering from spinal surgery I had in October. So I dont know how I will be by the summer.

[wheeliebear75]

I don't know ANYTHING about China! What I DO KNOW is: our situation can change all depending; since we're prone to adversely handling even subtle temperature fluctuations make sure you find out how the temps/weather is likely to change throughout the day....depending on WHERE/WHAT we're doing will dictate how much assistance we may need.....these are things that I might even discus with your classmates in respect to this trip. I took a few classes through the local community colleges & some of those classes had "lab" that was us doing a field trip......I was only UNABLE to go to 2 trips of our many many MANY trips (16wk course meant 14 field trips basically 1 per week)1 was to an electric power sub-station because there were ladders to climb & so I'd be spending 90% of that time in an employee break room that was on the 1st floor so I was excused, & 2nd was because it involved going into some canyons & beach-cliffs that are only accessible by some RUGGED terrain. For all other trips though including some where we went to Wild Animal Park (there are some minimally accessible spots that with a manual chair & enough man power can be circumvented) , a nursery (flower nursery & it had a lot of plastic irrigation pipes I couldn't run over), also into a rock quarry that took a lot of lifting/carrying me to get me around, a salt water marsh, a local state park that was pretty rugged (we managed but it was difficult enough the rangers who knew our next week's trip said it'd be un-safe for me to go) & at times required 2-4 strong men to lift/carry me for anywhere from a few feet to a patch that was so long we opted to piggy-back ME & have another guy carry my w/c & then a 3rd guy carry all the backpacks (on the way back the backpack guy & the chair carrier used the w/c to hold the bags & the 2 of them carried it together. My point in telling you all that is because if not for the willingness of my fellow students to assist me I would not have been able to do these field-trips. So it pays to find out before hand just who is willing & what/how much are they willing to do. BTW...you do realize all this international travel had BETTER spawn some pix.....OR ELSE! You know THAT...RIGHT?!?!? Enjoy your trip EC!

[HiltonP]

hannibal, on 05 December 2011 - 02:59 AM, said:

So my graduate school is planning a trip to China for one of our business classes. Iam not sure if I could handle the trip, I never been on a plane, and dont know how ada China is. Has anyone ever been to China? Also looking for advice. Thanks.

I don't really believe that the words "ADA" and "China" should ever be mentioned in the same sentence, but I did notice that in the last Paralympics they wiped the floor with the rest of the world when it came to the number of medals won! That tells me that while things may not be ideal there are obviously a number of disabled folk who are doing quite well.

Edited by HiltonP, 05 December 2011 - 11:28 AM.

[nomis]

If you don't go you'll likely spend the rest of your life wondering what you missed out on.

Anything new can feel scary. Usually we call it excitement - a great adventure into the unknown. Most every time the big deals turn out to be mirages and they fade away to nothing.

It's a big (figurative) step for you...but why not.

[hannibal]

Well I just spoke to the coordinator. We are going to be traveling to many different sites, and she say they didn't know how accessible most of those sites are. The trip will be for 3 weeks and my biggest concern is if I get sick or something goes wrong. I would have to rely on China's healthcare system. That's what I would be worried about the most, I don't know how good their healthcare system is.