Monday we arrived in Chengdu at 14:00 after a 25 hour train journey, we met our tour guide Kid and caught the MRT to our hostel, we spent the afternoon relaxing, showering and washing clothes. At 19:00 we went to a restaurant to try the famous 'hot pot' which is a sort of Chinese Stew, consisting of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table, ingredients such as thinly sliced meat, vegetables, wontons, dumplings and seafood, are placed into ...

Wednesday we woke early to check out and meet our group at 7:00, it was very daunting at first, the group is very big, 21 of us in total. We set off straight away, following the group leader Evan, to catch the tram up to Victoria Peak for our briefing, we all had to introduce ourselves, there's 2 Germans, 2 Kiwis, 4 Aussies and 12 British including ourselves. There is no chance we are going to remember everyone's names!!! Everyone seems really cool and a lot of p...

Sunday, we were collected at 6:00 for our drive to the airport with a fellow bristolian travelling to Bangkok. Our flight to Hong Kong was at 10:40 and only took 2 hours so by the time we were served our very delicious plane food, to it being cleared away after, we were pretty much there! It was very straightforward at the airport, we exchanged our left over Dong, collected our bags then walked to the bus station and caught the bus to Causeway Bay. Ben was so dis...

Thursday, the bus took about 4 hours, we dropped our bags then went for some dinner, after, we had showers and went to bed. Friday, we had a bit of a lie in, ate breakfast then walked to the Indian Embassy to collect our passports, we were all really pleased to have them back, so weird travelling without them after spending months keeping them safe! After, we walked around the shops, the boys had Ca Phe Sua Chua, a Vietnamese ice coffee with yogurt 'on the rock...

Monday, we were woken at 4:30am for our arrival into Hanoi, we had to walk to a hotel where they were holding our bus tickets to Cat Ba for us. We were very early but managed to wake the security guard and sleep in the lobby with him for a hour and a half until the receptionist came around 6:30am then off we went to catch our bus. Our bus was at 7:15 and took about 4 hours in total including the ferry across to Cat Ba Island, we were so tired when we finally arri...