Packing up my small rucksack and pulling myself out of bed, getting ready for a day of hiking and lots of moaning (on my behalf). I packed my basics and met the others, Dan, Ella and Nicole in the hostel lobby, ready to set out. We grabbed some baozi for breakfast and then grabbed the lovely clean, easy, beautiful, cheap subway :) It was a 3hour bus ride to the bottom of Emei Shan mountain where we would then begin our climb near the top, taking us around 3hours...

Sometimes miracles do work out, and turns out me and Cat managed to bag ourselves an extra week off, just before Chengdu, because of exams.. all falling beautifully into place. We headed off on our train to visit our friends Pete and Henry's project in Gansu, a much poorer province and 18hours on the train. It was luckily a very easy train journey, not too much snooring from the Chinese and we made some cool chinese friends who were keen to chat with us throughou...

(To be filled, reminder for myself :P)

Right this is what travelling is all about! Just .. what a place! Getting off the train the cold hit you already, I had already changed into my thermals in the muggy train toilets. 2 socks on, thermals on, hat on, scarf on, earmuffs on and gloves .. check! Once we got off the train you felt the cold, but for 9pm it wasn't as bad as I thought. We walked through the station carrying our backpacks... then it hit you. We headed out the station onto the icy floor...

Arrival in Qingdao was an ease, the flight was lovely, comfy and I even managed to snooze off in the journey. The only problem was, when grabbing a taxi to the hostel, we got in and then didn't see the guy turn off the meter. It wasn't until 10minutes later to which he explained that our friends in another taxi had agreed to pay 150Yuan .. WHAAATTT! We tried to call up our friends to work out what they were playing at but noone was answering. It wasn't until be...