We were determined to get a day of sightseeing in and rose early (when you're travelling 9 is early!) to head to the Shanghai Museum around the corner in People's Square. We were stunend to find that the queue was already stretching all the way around the building and so decided to head across to Pudong to try and do a trip up the tallest building in China, the 492 metre high SWFC. Once again, however, we were thwarted by the holiday crowds and found a three hour...

After a considerable lie-in punctuated by Champions' League highlights on the tv in our room we headed to 'the cage', the rooftop 5 a side football pitch that I played at on my previous visit to Shanghai. This time, however, we'd foolishly agreed to play at 1 in the afternoon and had to endure 30 degree heat (mad dogs and Englishmen!) as we shambled around. The sun beat down as Dave and I vied to spend as much time as possible as substitute or goalkeeper. After ...

We woke up to the sobering reality that we had at least 5 hours left trapped on the train. The size of China really hit home, we had been on the train for 12 hours and even after the full 17 we'd only have covered about half of it's width. After treating myself to a cookie breakfast that had the old lady in the bed opposite tutting I jumped back into 'Great Expectations' and 19th century England. Looking out the window at the peasants working the fields didn't se...

After affording ourselves a little lie-in we checked out of our 'home from home' for the last time. I headed out to find a bookstore containing English books for the gruelling 17 hour train we were about to catch and Dave went to search for more high quality goods to fill his house and fridge door. i wandered the streets for a while, taking in the mass of humanity that was swarming around making the most of their October holiday. I eventually found a bookshopand ...

We were up with the larks at 5 to try and watch the sunrise and headed back to the peak along with about 30 others. Sadly, mist enveloped the peak and we struggled to see 10 feet away, let alone the the sunrise! We headed to the restaurant and chugged back some noodles to power us on our way and set off to reach the other peaks. The exertions of the previous day left our legs pretty heavy but we reached the highest point of the mountain, the 2,196m South peak, be...