Our last stop in China was in the mammoth capital, Beijing! With around 20 million people living there it was much bigger than all the others we'd visited and on par with São Paulo in Brazil which also had a really big population. We were 'warned' of the crazy smog that can engulf the city on days where the pollution is particularly heavy but on our arrival we had clear skies and decent air... It wasn't to last! The rest of the time it was quite foggy looking a...

After seeing the giant panda's our next destination was Xian and the world famous Terra-cotta Warriors! We took a night train from Chengdu, and as with all forms of Chinese transport, it was inevitably delayed! The worst thing was that the train made it all the way to the city and then proceeded to crawl from the outskirts in! However... We made it, and luckily took a relatively short walk to our hostel. The hostel was one of the nicest we'd stayed in throughou...

Chengdu as a city wasn't high on the tourist trail aside from one major attraction... The giant panda breeding and research centre just outside of town! The city was modern, had many high rises, big multi lane highways and mainly local neighbourhoods. There was a nice inner city park we visited and some local areas we walked around but just visiting the panda's was worth the visit! The centre is just outside of town and home to hundreds of giant pandas! They ar...

After a few nights in Dali we moved onto Lijiang, it was only a few hours by train but a bit of rain inevitably caused a delay so a 2 hour journey ended up being about 6 hours in total! Once we arrived we grabbed a taxi to our hostel and were warned in an email that many drivers don't like the final drop up the hill... we found one of those drivers, although the final walk wasn't too bad and we made it in the end! The hostel was really cool, bit like a little mo...

Dali is known in China as a 'backpackers and hippies' mecca. An area which supposedly saw the first few outgoing western travellers settle and travel in. We arrived by train and after a frantic bus ride (which could have been avoided as a bus leaves about every 5 mins from the station!) we made it to Dali Old Town. Our hostel has since 'changed' into a hotel, gone more upmarket and changed its name but as it was quiet we got an improved room for the same cost! W...