Having wanted to leave Shanghai on Saturday for Beijing, it made sense to make booking train tickets top of our priority list. So off we headed to the train station, blissfully unaware China was gearing up for a national holiday. We get the station and it's complete pandemonium, thousands of people scurrying around in the hope of purchasing a ticket. Being Western, we looked for an authoritative type figure, someone to control the chaos but the best the station s...

Day 10 Fresh from our fantastic tea experience, we decided to opt for some real culture and headed for Yu Yuan Gardens, only to greeted bya security guard who was listening to Sean Kingston's summer hit 'Beautiful Girls'. Me being me, I had to get involved and with the help of Steve, we formed a fabulous trio, serenading passers by. The garden's were very picturesque and with beautiful blue skies, we got some really nice shots. Our next stop was People's Square, ...

Day 09 - Wed 24th Sept: Having slept for most of the journey, I woke up in good time and started talking with one of the locals in our carriage. Billy was a Chinese hair stylist and was also traveling from Hong Kong to Shanghai having just finished a weeks holiday. He told us the main sights to visit in Shanghai and even paid for our subway tickets to the hostel. We arrived in Shanghai at 10:00am, said goodbye to our new friend and following his instructions, fou...

Day 08 - Tues 23rd Sept After packing our bag's and saying goodbye to Li's Hostel and with a 21hour train journey ahead of us, we decided to treat ourselves to a traditional English breakfast (including hot chocolate) from an Irish pub next to the hostel. Our timing couldn't have been worse, as we were joined by thee most pompous, insulting, moody Australian teacher, clearly suffering from delusions of grandeur! Not only did she decided to give us a 30min lectur...

Day 07 - Mon 22nd Sept We had a lot of time to kill today due to waiting around to collect our visa's later that afternoon, so we decided to hit Kowloon park. I headed straight for the footie pitch, eager to teach the locals a thing or two but it was empty! We decided to have a little kick around on our own and I hit a 30yard..ok, 20 yard screamer into the top corner. After that moment of brilliance, we decided the heat was too much and headed for a dip in the p...