24th april our train from Tai'an pulled into shanghai just after midnight so we got a taxi with Leroy to the only hostel that was less than Y60. luckily they had enough space for us, allbeit in seperate rooms, and we went to sleep pretty-much straight away. 25th April we woke up and went for a stroll to get a feel for our surroundings and the city. Shanghai is China's biggest city (pop 16milion), and from the amount of ultramodern glass-covered skyscrapers and...

We managed to completely miss this place off the blog, I guess better late than never! We had decided to brake up our journey from beijing to shanghai in order to combat the holiest of chinas five holy mountains. We were climbing in the footsteps of some of the biggest players in chinese history: confucious, big man mao and jackie chan. We stayed for one night in the small town at the foot of the mountain and then headed out mid morning. The mountain is no test ...

We marched the 5km back to the train station feeling wet. Our next destination was south of beijing in a province called shandong so we took a nine hour train to ji'nan (a link city to the mountain). On the train we met a 22 year old chinese soldier who we befriended. He spoke no english but asked with the use of the lonely planet mandarin phrase book weather he could help us. In the end we stayed in the army hostel with him and he took us out for the best meal w...

19-04-08 is the date We just about managed to tear ourselves away from Beijing. I think that it is the best city I have visited thus far. ^these are a few things we have already encountered in china. 1. Everyone in china spits. The question is not whether to do it or not, it is how you should go about it. It seems old men like to make as much noise as possible wherever they are be it a bank or in the street. The chinese favourite is definately the snot rocket...

8th april arrived in Beijing with Sam at 5am just as it was starting to get light and hopped on a tube to our respective hostels. After arriving at our hostel, we hired bikes and boshed it down to the forbidden city and tian'anmen square. Neither of them really lived-up to expectations: the forbidden city (amazingly impressive though it is thinking about the story behind its construction) is just a series of seemingly endless corridors and huge squares with a fe...