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 officials at border crossings to make you fill out complicated forms in foreign languages (oops, it turns out I wasn't born in 2010) and carry all your belongings out into the freezing cold so that you could stand there shivering while they decide they don't actually feel like making you go through security after all. To make matters worse we had to go through this process twice, once at 2.30am to get out of Vietnam and again at 3.30am to get into China.

Once we got out of the train later that morning in Nanning we knew we weren't in Kansas aka South East Asia anymore. We were now in a land of next to no English speakers, an alphabet we can't understand (except for occasional flashes of brilliance from Sarah) and a population of 1.3 billion people who hate to queue, instead preferring to create moving moshpits, with their luggage and babies in tow. The freezing cold doesn't help either (it's currently -10 outside). More fun is the fact that everywhere we go we are stared at, people yell hello and if you ever find about 50 photos of me making the bunny ears photo sign with various citizens of the Henan province, don't be surprised. It is quite weird though. We keep having people wave their cameras at us and we assume,as you do, that they would like someone to take their photo. Instead we find ourselves the subject of the camera, usually with four strangers with their arms wrapped round us.

In Nanning we discovered we had not Chinese money. We had tried to exchange some in Vietnam but all the exchanges were closed and we were told we would be able to do it at the border (apparently not at 3 in the morning). This became a problem when, after half an hour of searching for an ATM, it turned out that most ATMs don't accept international cards. Using our new best friend, the illegally photocopied lonely planet we bought in Hanoi, we were able to point repeatedly at the chinese characters for 'international money exchange' until we were directed (using alot of gestures, which most of our communication has now become) to a bank that did accept our cards.

Next we had to find the right line to buy a train ticket to Zheng Zhou, buy the ticket, find the entrance to the departure hall, get through security, find our platform, push through a mass of people to get onto the train, and then find our seats.

Having accomplished all of this we were feeling pretty worn out and saret back to watch the Chinese countryside go by for, well we weren't sure how long, but a note I'd written in the itinerary I'd drafted out six months ago said '8 hours' so we were thinking about that. When Sylvia and I asked probably the only English speaker on the train, a friendly girl who had learnt English at high school and wanted to practive with us, she told about 2pm, the next day. What is the appropriate reaction to finding out you are going to spend 26 hours in hard seat on a train when you expected it to take 8? I don't know, but Sylvia and I received this news completely impassively without acknowledging anything unexpected had occurred. Just as I calmly flipped through our lonely planet to confirm the news, Sarah, with her brilliant timing, asked "are we going to be there soon?" All Sylvia and I could do was laugh and we didn't tell her for another hour what had happened by which time all she could do was låugh as well.

26 hours was rough, especially given we'd just been on a train for 10 hours, and we got absolutely no sleep. Our saving grace was the delicious and cheap food that would be pushed by at 10 minute intervals, I swear you could get anything you could think of on that train. We also made alot of friends starting out with the group of men sitting next to us, first by them laughing hysterically at us (this happens all the time, I still haven't worked out exactly why we are so hilarious) and then by letting them browse intently through our ever fascinating fake lonely planet.

We passed a good amount of time playing cards with the girl who could speak English. First we taught her last card and then she taught us a Chinese card game, which we had to learn fast so as not to be embarrassed in front of the audience we were attracting. Luckily for me one member, a man who seemed to know the game well, possibly because he was the owner of the cards, decided to adopt me and, in pidgin Chinese-gesture language, helped me devise a strategy so that I won nearly every time.

By the time we got off the train the following day we were cold and exhausted. We were now in a city called Zheng Zhou, the capital of Henan province, one of the poorest provinces in China. We had no idea where to go and ended up settling on a (for our budget) very expensive hotel near the train station in a public square with a huge pagoda. After turning the heater up as high as it would go and taking a hot shower we braved the cold for a few more hours before going to bed. Our sole activity in Zheng Zhou was eating. There were street stalls everywhere, selling amazing food for on average 20cents each. We ate savoury pancakes, hot chilli chicken bund, dumplings, fried bread, almond tea, meat on a stick and alot more stuff that I can't remember, but I know was delicious. We repeated the experience the next morning before heading to the train station to get a train to Xinxiang, finding the trains were full and instead getting a bus, then from Xinxiang taking a bus to Huixian from where we could get a bus to Guolian, a tiny mountainside village that was our final destination. Unfortnately we missed the last bus by half an hour and to make matters worse I had either lost, or had my wallet stolen on the bus to Huixian. After alot of gesturing with the train station staff and a translation via phone from someone's friend who could speak English we learnt that we could catch the bus the next morning, but my wallet was a write off.

So we spent a night in Huixian. I really no nothing about this place except that it has two exciting supermarkets, where we spent most of the evening yelling "what is this?! come over here and look at this?" and having our photos taken by surprised locals.

The next morning we took a bus into the middle of nowhere, got off and managed to get someone to drive us up the hill to Guolian. Guolian was absolutely beautiful and aboslutely freezing. We spent the day walking around the beautiful mountainside to see the sheer cliff staircase that used to be the only way to get to the villiage until they helpfully built a road in the 1970s. It was quite alarming when the peaceful quiet was interrupted by a huge 'boom' which we later found our (through gestures) were some form of explosion for god-knows-what reason. It did provide me with one of the funniest sights I've ever seen, when the first explosion went off and Sarah went running towards the bank in panic, convinced the road was about to give way beneath her.

After the coldest night I've ever experienced, sleeping in -9 degrees with no heating, we set off determined to make it to Beijing in one day so that we could make our hostel booking date. At most points I was convinced we weren't going to make it but with some help of alot of lovely people, three buses, a van ride, a very long taxi ride, alot of complicated ticket offices, an epic run to our platform, a five hour train ride, being stuck in a taxi line full of drivers who didn't understand us, another taxi ride after another lovely person translated for us and a freezing 1km walk down a Beijing street we clambered through our hostels doors at 11.50pm.