We arrived in Shanghai after a long train journey from Quingdao. We needed to find our accommodation quite quickly as Jen's health was starting to deteriorate...consequently Jen spent the next 3 days close to a toilet in the hostel.

Meanwhile Sal and Vic spent this time shopping, drinking the local spirits (plenty of) and a bit of sight seeing! We decided to check out the Chinese Sexual Culture museum and Deep Sea Creatures museum. Both were ridiculously funny-all for the wrong reasons... some fake turtles were one example of a deep sea creature!humm.

Once Jen was back on track we headed down to Xi'an, we found a lovely hostel and managed to make some more friends. We went to a 'Panda Sanctuary' which turned out to be a horrible zoo keeping all these endangered animals in dirty cramped little cages. The Pandas looked so sad it was heart-breaking! Although the highlight of the trip was watching two massive black bears mating, fascinating?!!!?!

We also went to see the Terra-cotta Warriors which was really interesting and quite amazing to see! This was one of the highlights for us in China. We think that China is quite a strange place, we are aware that there was so much of China that we didn't see but what we did see was quite westernised and built-up cities.

After much deliberation we decided to fly into Hong Kong straight from Xi'an. We were considering going to the Three Gorges but due to hassle with getting trains and needing to sort out our Vietnam visa we regretably decided to give it a miss (apparenlty there had been severe flooding anyway so perhaps it was the right choice!)

Hong Kong was a really nice place to visit. On arrival the sun was shining and the views of the mountains with the sky-scrapers embedded within them was amazing...and there were blue skies with no smog-lovely!

The city is clean and buzzing with people. We headed straight to our recommended hostel which was in a slightly bizzare setting- a multi story multi cultural multi stinky shopping centre/ghetto but it was cheap and in the middle of the city so it was good.

Had a couple of nights out on the town, very expensive but really good fun and we would recommend it to anyone who has a bit more cash to spare than us. We took a tram up to Victoria Peak which has panoramic views of Hong Kong-amazing! Well worth the trip.

Looking forward to getting to Vietnam and chilling out on the beach.