Melbourne, Australia (19th Dec 2007) We arrived in Melbourne after a lengthy flight from Shanghai then a transfer from Sydney. Rather than give in and get a taxi to our hostel we decided to get the tram as Mark was familiar with the city and the directions to the hostel seemed pretty easy. After lugging our backpacks halfway across the city (that's what it felt like in the unfamiliar heat we were experiencing) we made it to our tram stop and hopped on board. W...

Shanghai, China (15th Dec 2007) After our final overnight train we arrived in Shanghai in the early morning and managed to navigate Shanghai's metro system to find our way to our hostel, where we were told that we couldn't check in yet as the people in our beds (yup, it's time for the dorm room adventures!!) hadn't checked out. So off we went to do a bit of exploring on foot for a couple of hours. One of Shanghai's most talked about attractions is The Bund, lo...

Beijing, China (12th Dec 2007) We took the overnight sleeper train from Xian (same as we usually do) and shared our cabin with two Chinese guys who spoke absolutely no English what so ever and showed absolutely no interest in us at all and even one guy sat outside the cabin, which was fine with us and meant we got to have a nice and peaceful journey watching one of our many new DVD's! We pulled into Beijing station exactly on time at 7:30am and decided that t...

Xi'an, China (9th Dec 2007) Arriving in Xi'an, we were confronted with the coldest temperatures we had felt so far, to the point where we could even see our breath in front of our faces which is something we hadn't seen for a long long time! Our battle to get to our hotel began at the taxi rank where taxi after taxi refused to take us even though Mark had downloaded the address in Chinese and English to his phone to hopefully make it a little easier for us... ...

Guangzhou, China (7th Dec 2007) After a relatively painless Hydrofoil trip we arrived in Panyu, 30km south of Guangzhou, which is when the fun began! Half expecting a transfer to our hotel we were disappointed to not see anyone holding a sign with our name on it but weren't too disheartened as we thought we could get on a shuttle bus that dropped off at hotels in the area. Then came the second blow when the people on the bus didn't know the name of our hotel a...