Shanghai We arrived in Shanghai late morning on Saturday 21st after a 15 hour train journey from Xi'an.As soon aswe left the station you could tell that the city was more metropolitan than those that we had visited in Northern China, I'm not sure if it was the change in fashion or the fact that the locals weren't constantly staring at you, but it was definitely different. The hotel, was quite nice, about a 10 minute walk from the centre of town and not a bad vi...

After the first of many epic train journeys (15 hours) we arrived in Xi'an at or hotel at 6:30am and promptly headed to bed! We had hard sleepers on the train which weren't so bad, the pain was eased by several beers, lots of games of 'a*******' (a card game, which I am sure the SEEVIC guys will remember waisting hours playing rather than going to General Studies!) and a few shots of rice wine for the loosers! After our power naps we all met up and headed out o...

So I arrived at Beijing airport safe and sound on Friday 13th of February. I took a taxi to the hotel, which was a mission in itself, as despite reading my Manderin Chinese phrase book cover to cover I knew b***** all Chinese and the cab driver knew even less English! Still 10 minutes in to the journey and artic lorry try to kill us both and we found our common ground in nervous laughter! He dropped me outside a restraunt, on the fringe of the city centre. He wa...