Day 18 We woke up on the train and realised we had another 5 hours or so to go. We both had top bunks which meant we couldnt sit up as the space was so small. All the chairs along the side were taken and we were sick of lying down, but there wasn't much we could do about it. We eventually arrived in Chengdu feeling a bit stiff at 12:40pm, 17 hours after leave Xi'an. On first inspection of our room we were blown away with the smell of damp but after a bit of com...

Day 13 After waiting 5 minutes for our free pick up from the hostel we were about to find a bus when someone came rushing over with Eve's name in his hand, our free pick up! We arrived at the hostel and thought it was dark and gloomy unitll we realised they had a power cut. We slept for a few hours and then had a much needed shower and headed for the muslim quater. On the way we seen the roundabout-converted Bell Tower and then the Drum Tower- both of which wer...

Day 10 After our first night train we awoke at 6 tired from people leaving the train throughout the night and got ready to leave ourselves. We walked to the hostel and crashed out on the beds. We then got ready and walked around the ancient town. It is still enclosed by the city walls that were built 600 years ago, so many of the buildings were built around that time too, like stepping back in time! We bumped into one of the lads from our datong tour and found ...

Day 7 we rushed to the train station and found our cramped 'hard' seats and with plenty of people staring we read our books. The six hour journey took us to Datong. The hostel we booked was about an hour walk away so the well known Mr Gao (local travel agent mentioned in many travel books and online blogs) found us and after checking a few hotels ourselves we went to the one he told us about. It was a dump! Yet it was cheap and close to the train station and ab...

Day 1 We touched down in beijing and after collecting our baggage, we realised neither of us had wrote down any directions to our hostel and not a single taxi driver would take us either, slightly worrying! After finding a cafe with wifi we drew up directions and walked it. It was down a 'hutong' which is a traditional chinese back alley, we didnt know if this was a good thing at first as there was know english but at the same time we were in china and got wha...