One of the guys on the trans tour was travelling through Siberia to get to his new uni in Shanghai. So after I reached, we'd met and he took me over to his halls. The week I was in Shanghai was a national holiday in China so everyone gets the week off and it's madness! All prices are ramped up and hostels were rolling out on Centre Parcs prices! So I stayed in his halls. He was actually off to Inner Mongolia for the week as it was his break too, but after he'd le...

I got to Guilin pretty late in the day, so had a meander round town and a pretty quiet one in the hostel. Next day I got up to catch a bus that took me to Li River, where we'd hop on our bamboo raft to Yangshuo. There wasn't actually any bamboo on board - just PVC - but was a nice trip spent with a Chinese girl and her parents. After the scenic journey they offer you another tour down the 'best part' of the river, on actual bamboo. We had a bit of time before tha...

Again the hard seat on the overnighter paid off and I managed to get a fair chunk of sleep in. For the English guy opposite, Johno, it was a different story. Boombox must've kept him up... Johno and I went and met the others who were in their sleepers and made plans to meet later for a hotpot. For my first day in Chengdu, the only thing really on the agenda was pandas. They've got a big breeding and research centre nearby and I ended up spending the whole day the...

Considering I'd opted for the hard seat for my 14-hour train to Xi'an, I was pretty well rested. Went and met one of the guys from the trans-Siberian who'd come to Xi'an ahead of me. We made our way to the Great Mosque, picking up some really good street food on the way. Great Mosque was interesting, though it'll be better in a year as they had building work going on and the guy calling for prayer was clearing his throat every 3rd word - not the guy for the job.....

It was seriously humid when we first got to Beijing, but the humidity was soon broken by a monsoon. We decided to go to an acrobatics show in the hope the rain would calm down. In the show they had all sorts going on - balancing stacks of glasses on a lady's nose, chucking trilbys about and packing 8 guys on motorbikes inside one of those meshed spheres. It was a pretty ropey performance but luckily nothing serious happened! Shortly after we had our first taste o...