Dawn broke for us on New Year's Eve with the train cruising along. Everyone actually slept well considering the air conditioning was on cold for some bizarre reason. The train eventually arrived into the town of Suzhou at 11am which Tommy informed us of a modest population of 10 million?! We took a taxi transfer with the driver surrounded by a metal cage which was reassuring... where were we? The hotel on arrival was very nice and the room was warm and pleasant,...

We awoke wrapped up like Eskimos with the room actually feeling bearable, the heater had obviously decided to do its job overnight and we were pretty toasty. Due to the little ht water bottles Laura had put together made our toes the warmest they had been in China so far. We packed up our gear and I decided to head out to get some sunrise photographs while Laura drank her milky tea in bed... which was like a creamy baileys... very strange! It was a bright and s...

We awoke relatively early and headed to the nearby bus station to catch our ride to the Shaolin temple. The station was a bit of a circus as people were harassing tommy to ensure he picked their bus. Once our bus was chosen we boarded and Laura and I soon realised it was not made us lanky types, my knees were basically around my ears. On top of this there was a really loud Chinese tv show being played which did start to grate on you after a while. It's was like ...

Today we awoke early as we were uncertain what time we had to meet our tour group. After some basic detective work our departure time was 10 o'clock. I also found out that the jelly like cubes I consumed last night were rice noodles moulded into cubes, which did make me slightly relieved. We headed to Xi'an train station and again had to face the massive crowds queuing up for their trains. We boarded onto the train and after some negotiations managed to sit toget...

Today was the day we would finally see the famous terracotta warriors. We woke at seven thirty and put plenty of layers on before Steven headed for breakfast. At nine we met the group in the lobby and headed to our private mini bus that would take us the hour journey. We also had a local guide with us and she spent the hour telling us all the history of Xi'an and the warriors themselves. The journey was nice and I enjoyed looking out the window at the world w...