The day began as an early start, we had chosen to travel a bit further away from the usual tourist areas of the wall to do a 10.5 km hike along a slightly more remote section. Our 4 hour bus journey started at 6.30 in the morning so we were a bit bleary-eyed as we set out but by the time we arrived the 30 or so of us on the bus were ready to take on the wall. As a brief history the first wall was unified in the reign of the first Emperor of the whole of China o...

This is very much a retrospective entry as I'm struggling to keep the blog up, think I'm going to end up writing about most of China from Australia when I get there! After my slightly unorthodox first day in Shanghai I spent the second day shopping for a camera then hopped on an overnight train up to Beijing. I shared my carriage with a man whose snoring could put the other giants in the BFG to shame but arrived in Beijing running high on adrenaline. After brie...

Due to the vagaries of my round the world ticket I had to arrive here in Shanghai before heading up to meet my travelling companion, Dave, in Beijing. The flight was long and I managed little sleep but I felt strangely chipper as I headed into Shanghai on the Maglev (a high speed train topping out at 430 km/h) then continued on in the metro. This leg of my journey was made considerably easier by the instructions I'd been sent by Joe, the friend of Dave's that had...