At about six in the morning, I was woken by the sound of people getting up to see the sunrise over the Steppe. When I felt the cold air come through the door, I decided firmly against doing anything that involved getting out from under my duvets. When we were all getting up, around two hours later, Freddie discovered a giant spider on his blanket, and calmly pointed it out to everyone. This caused a general state of panic in the room, and Freddie decided to deal ...

After another few days of trying and failing to understand the Dream of the Red Chamber, we were fortunate enough to be given a day's holiday for the Mid-Autumn Festival on Thursday 19th, providing us with a four-day weekend. What better way to spend this time than in a yurt in the Inner Mongolian grasslands? As is always the case in such a highly-populated country, buying tickets was a challenge and we ended up getting a hard-seat return to Hohot (the capital o...