Hangzhou was a very nice city to visit.......and had much more of what we had expected from Suzhou. The weather there was actually pretty nice and so we walked around alot of the city on the first day. We went through the central part of the original city (the CBD is separated), where there is a pedestrian street filled with alot of interesting shops and a whole heap of food sellers. The following day we hired bikes again and are now getting used to the saddles a...

From Hangzhou we went to Guilin for a little while, in the hope that as it was much further south it would be hotter. These hopes were dashed by the fact it rained quite a bit whilst we were there. However we did cycle around a fair bit, along the Li river, a load of lakes and such. We went to see some rock/hill that was meant to look like an elephant but we never saw from which way this would be, so a touh disappointing. We also got lost a fair bit whilst there...

Only really had one day in Suzhou but it has been enough as it wasn't quite the place I expected it to be. It is much bigger and polluted than I had expected it to be. It is just another Chinese city. However, we rented bikes today and have been around much of the cities waterways (although you can't cycle directly along alot of these). Also went up to Tiger Hill to some nice gardens there and to see one of the 2 big pagaodas they have here, thought this one is l...

So I only had a very brief time in Shanghai as there wasn't all that much I wanted to do there. I have also met back up with Bonita who I met just before leaving Mongolia and spent my time with in Beijing. I did alot of walking in Shanghai with the aim of seeing as much as possible in a short amount of time. So we went to the old city which had been rebuilt and was very touristy but nice. Also walked along the Bund at night and went up one of the big skyscrapers...

So I arrived in Tai'an on Tuesday and hadn't quite realised how difficult it can be when you are the only non-chinese person in an entire city. Fortunately a nice man took it upon himself to help me find my way to my hostel even though he couldn't speak to me at all and he didn't know where he was himself. So after he'd asked around 10 other people for directions I gave up and got a taxi. Until 8pm on the first day I only saw one other person in my hostel......a...