Chinese sleeper trains are an experience! We took one from Beijing to Xi'an and were cramped into 6 berth compartments with three tier bunks up each wall. We all crowded into one compartment to drink some very dodgy 67% proof fruit flavoured spirit and play drinking games - great fun! We were sharing our compartment with a Chinese family who gave us manadarins for breakfast. The little girl was chatting away in Chinese to Mark and all he could say was 'uh ok'! T...

We met up with our tour group of 10 people - 8 Brits and 2 Aussies. Weird being around so many British people all of a sudden! Our first day of the tour was a visit to the Great Wall of China....but not the easy, renovated, touristy bit of the Great Wall oh no...a challenging 10k stretch of crumbling wall with no flat bits only steep hills and steep drops! In some places we were climbing steep steps with both hands and feet or tentatively climbing down what appe...

Getting to Beijing required two flights with China Southern Airways with only 25 minutes transit time in a Chinese airport between, in which we were labelled and had to scuttle round the airport through scary immigration, passport control, customs, bag scanning and infection & quarantine in record time! When we finally arrived in Beijing, wearing flipflops and shorts we were greeted by an icy blast of wind. Beijing had experienced a dramatic change of weathe...