We had a rough itinerary planned for our week long trip to Japan, using Osaka as our base and traveling around the Kansai region. Our travel there was pretty smooth, although we hadn't checked that the money had come out for the flights and I began to have doubts that we could travel" visa free" in Japan, (we had needed a visa for all other countries so far). It turns out they let us on the flight and welcomed us with a traditional bow at customs! Ha...

We spent a couple of days in Shanghai, it's another huge city and appears to be not short of cash. There's a lot of development, construction and some huge impressive buildings. Our first day was spent getting our train tickets to Hong Kong (we queued in 4 different places before we got our tickets!) Then we went to People's Square (like Times Square). There's a nice little park there and we were approached by a Chinese couple who were students. After a bit of ...

Our final Trans Mongolian journey took us from UB to Beijing, around 1500Km; this took 30 hours with about a 5 hour border crossing. I don't think I mentioned before that every kilometer is marked out at the side of the track…..just in case you're really bored you can keep an eye on your progress. At the border the Mongolian and Chinese health officials came on to check no one had swine flu symptoms. The Chinese also had a thermometer to take everyone's forehea...

Hi all, we've just arrived back from a 5 day trip, travelling through Mongolia's diverse countryside, we've also just had a well deserved shower! Here's what we got up to: We travelled in a Russian camper van with another couple who were coincidentally on their honeymoon too, we also had a great driver (who spoke no English) and a translator (see last point). We soon realized that Mongolia is still a developing country as 90% of the trip was off road, as the roa...

We spent one night in Irkutsk and then boarded a public bus to Olkhon Island, the largest island in the lake. We stayed in a great guesthouse (Nikita's), or homestead as they call it. All log cabins and self sufficient. This has been the place where we've met the most travellers and realise we're not alone doing this trip! No other Irish yet, but lots of French and some English. We did a tour throughout the island, and learned abour their Shaminism and myths abo...