Despite knowing we were coming at completely the wrong time of year for the good views of the Li River that we came here for we're really glad we came anyway! We had a rather stressful couple of hours in Shenzhen train station (the border town with Hong Kong). Firstly, despite having now been officially part of China for over ten years the border was one of the most strict we have been through so far. Graham got searched, had our food for the train confiscated a...

Partly due to the fact that we were booking it so late at night and partly due to the fact that Shanghai is loads more expensive than anywhere else we've been, we blew the budget here! We booked ourselves into a dead posh old hotel near The Bund. After rejuvenating ourselves with a little afternoon nap we met Katharine (Clarke - yes, bizarre we know! The fact we met in Shanghai we mean, not Katharine herself!) and a friend of her's and Lianne's, the rather quick...

We had a fairly eventful start to our journey from Xi'an. It was raining . . . it appeared to be taxi-driver shift change time and no one would take us to the train station - cue a bit of stress! Graham spent an inordinately long amount of time trying to explain to a taxi driver what a **** he was . . . Graham swore, Gemma swore at Graham for swearing. It didn't help! A very friendly Chinese guy came to our rescue and persuaded a taxi driver that he did want ...

We took the overnight sleeper from Chengdu on the 23rd - though we cheated and went softsleeper! We shared our cabin with two Chinese guys who spoke absolutely no english and showed absolutely no interest in us so we thought we were in for a peaceful journey . . . until they came back from their dinner rather the worse for wear and wanted to be our best mates! They were determined that we were going to have a conversation! So with the aid of the guidebook we asce...

We flew to Chengdu on the 20th with Air China and survived our (statistically) most dangerous journey yet! We discovered that other than panda's and A LOT of banks (!) Chengdu doesn't have a great deal to offer the sightseeing tourist! (We went to a couple of temples too!). We were lucky that we had a brilliant hostel with couches, good food and cheap beer and that kept us more than entertained for a few days and meant we still had a pleasant time! Graham has d...