Ni Hao,China is a country in which it would be nice to be able to say a little more than 'hello', 'thank you', 'book' and 'swimming' (the last two are not the most useful words either). Beijing is mostly not too hard, but crossing China South-North without speaking the language (although Sarah's school-Chinese did resurface itself admirably) was a mission. We took an overnight train from Hanoi to Nanning, but this resulted in little sleep due to the fondness of ...

Hello, amazingly we've made it across China to Beijing which was no easy feat. But I'll tell you more about that later because I don't want to forget about Vietnam.I found Vietnam a very pretty country, but with a prettiness that is distinctively its own. It very much suits the colour grey, which is strange because usually I think of grey as cold and depressing (think London) but in Vietnam it is full of blue and purple hues that set off the colours of the street...