So we arrived in Hanoi early really, I had hardly any sleep on the train so I checked in to the hotel and had a little cat nap until 10 o'clock.Jaap and I had a wander around the city.The city is quite small, it's difficult to get your bearings as every street looks the same but the streets are signed very well so not that difficult to find yourself on the map.The architecture has a French influence, so can be lovely but the Vietnamese have no concept of mainte...

Kaili - Xijing So I'd bought my new bag for the 5 day trek and packed it with a spare set of dirty clothes (there was no time to get laundry done in HK).It then came to light on the overnight train that the trek was only 2 nights, so I slimmed down my stuff and used my Camelback (I'm still pissed off that I wasted $20 on another bag, which I don't really have room to carry). When we got to Kaili, we had two hotel rooms to get changed in and pack ready for the ...

The train from Guilin to Hong Kong was a strange journey, everybody wanted to be up beat as it was our last overnight train as a group, but most of us were feelingcrappy from the stomach bug, the rest were just tired from the hike and the lack of sleep over the previous few nights. Poor old Jaap had to say his goodbyes at 6:30am, a couple of hours outside Hong Kong as he had mis-read the visa information and only got a single entry Chinese visa, he had to spend a...

In order to get to the rice terraces we had to take a 4 hour death ride coach from Guilin 900m up in to the mountains.The ride was pretty rough, we got as far as our tour bus could take usand had to change for another 30 minute local bus, when we finally got tothe top we had an hour trek up to our guest house (luckily we were able to leave our big bags in Guilin).I'm sure the views would have been absolutely stunning had it not been foggy! The guest house cooked...

The journey here wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, there was plenty of s***head and a******* played with the obligatory rice wine for the loosers!And of course one or two Chinese beers, I also learnt how to play Yatzi properly which is cool.Thankfully Anna was much worse at both than I so I avoided the rice wine hangover, that she endured! When we arrived in Guilin station we were all so happy to be in warmer climes, it was by no means hot but we co...