This is our last full day in China, and the 3rd time I have tried to write this blog. The internet at our hostel has been pretty terrible, but apart from that it has been great and we'd recommend it to anyone staying in Shanghai. Tomorrow we fly to Bangkok to start the second part of our trip - South East Asia. After a month in China we've become accustomed to the bizarre sights that make up a Chinese persons daily life. Grown men and women wearing pyjama's duri...

Just a quick one from Hangzhou, we've spent just under a week here and we've really enjoyed it. The place where we stayed is right on the West Lake which is absolutely huge and surprisingly tranquil for China! We've learned to cope with the hustle and bustle, well sort of, but it's been really laid back here. Not ideal preparation for Shanghai, especially in China's national week. We're off on the train in the morning to Shangers which is only 2 hours away. We've...

Greetings from a wet Xi'an! We've been here for 5 days now and the weather has been ok, it's a lot cooler than Beijing generally but we've had a couple of scorchers! The mozzies are out in full force here too. Xi'an is a great little city - little by Chinese standards with only 3.25 million living here! It's a lot easier to get around than Beijing which was huge, but it needs to be big to fit over 16 million in it! We've found it a little more difficult here as...

Alreyt! Got a bit more time to write this one and now we can see what we are actually writing - the computers here are fast. Honest. We've moved onto another hostel in Beijing for 2 nights, we really liked the first one but it was booked up and Pickles isn't one for staying in a dorm room. It was in an old hutong (narrow alley way with old Chinese buildings) and the street was lined with bars, cafe's and restaurants. The new one is a bit more basic but we're nea...

Hello all, Ni hao from Beijing. We arrived safely after a lovely flight with the 'hospitable' German's at Lufthansa, we even had a female attendant called B. Becker. Our hostel is nice and weather has been really hot so far. We've done a few of the tourist sights such as Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven park, with the Great Wall and Forbidden City to come. We tried to get to the Olympic site but the sneaky so and so's wouldn't let us in without a ticket...