Shanghai, our final stop in China before heading down to warmer territories! Shanghai turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Neither of us particularly like big cities but the enormous, unique and very abstract collection of skyscrapers towering above the Huangpu river were a sight to see. A two kilometre section of concreted riverbank nicknamed 'the Bund' provides a perfect platform for viewing the beasts on the opposite side of the river. An equally amazing vie...

If it weren't for the invite from Emilina and Geoffrey (the French couple that we met on the Yangzi River) we probably wouldn't have even considered visiting Hangzhou. Described by our new friends as a weekend getaway for Shanghai residents, Hangzhou turned out to be a refreshing stay. Built around the magnificent and almost totally man-made Xi Hu (West Lake), with scattered gardens, boardwalks and bridges around the lake edge, this was a very beautiful place. T...

Having now caught just about every mode of public transport offered in china, we can safely say that the bus is the least comfortable. The crazy driving and bumpy roads, crappy Chinese pop music videos and continuous stops at disgusting public toilets make the trip less than enjoyable, and they seem to be more expensive than the trains?!? After six hours of this we were dropped off in an unknown, quiet, dark and dirty part of the city, so our first impressions o...

On board a rickety, grubby old bus from the Three Gorges Dam to the down river city of Wuhan, we have just spent the last four days enjoying the scenic Yangzi River from a Chinese domestic tourist boat. Out of the 400+ passengers, only 5 were of Anglo-Saxon appearance, and due to our apparent poor Chinese skills, we were buddied up with a French couple in a tiny four-bed dorm. With the help of some strong rice wine and a few games of mahjong, we were soon speakin...

The warnings we had heard about the Chinese trains turned out to a be fallacy. Having previously travelled on sleeper trains across eastern Europe, the chinese carriage was relatively spacious and quite comfortable, at least on the bottom beds. Consequently, we arrived in Chongqing more rested than anticipated. Arriving in a city where literally no one around us seemed to speak any English, and not having written down the hostel name or address in Chinese, we st...