We'd taken our first internal flight from Chongqing to Guilin and it was ok. Once we landed we got the shuttle bus into Guilin, where we were staying for one night. We got into the Guilin hostel quite late,. As we expected Bryan and Sara were waiting in the bar for us as they had taken an earlier flight than us...they were definite following us and had taken the best room. We were informed that we would have to have twin beds once again, despite us booking ...

We took another night train from Xi'an to Chengdu and this was probably our best night train yet. As its the school holidays we were lucky that we got a train ticket. Thanks to Tony (from Beijing), we bought all our train ticket up till now in Beijing. We got on the train and straight away noticed that we were the oldest in our carriage! I thought, everyone's about 18 on here...this is going to be the party train! Unfortunately it wasn't...we had a good time...

We caught another night train from Pingyao to Xi'an, which was ok but not as good as the last one as we were right by the toilets and we had some big time snorers above us!! Xi'an is one of the oldest cities in China, with more than 3,100 years of history and it is from Xi'an that you can visit the Terracotta Warriors. We stayed in a fairly new hostel which was more like a hotel! On the first day we met a couple who had been teaching in China for the past 5 mon...

Pingyao We caught our first night train to Pingyao. We were a bit nervous about the night train but it was actually ok and 100% better than the first train we caught. We got a hard sleeper which means you are in a carriage which contains rooms without doors and within those rooms are three bunk beds on either wall. We opted for the middle bunk on both sides so we were next to each other.We managed to get a little bit of sleep and arrived in Pingyao at 6.30am. ...

After surviving our first train journey, we left the train station and were immediately approached by a man working for CITS (China International Tour Services) who spoke really good English. We'd already booked some accommodation in Datong for the night, but he said we could look at the hotel they work from and to see if we're interested in any tours. We knew we only had one night and day in Datong as there's really only 2 things to go and see. The Hanging ...