04 February 2009 We didn't do much yesterday during our last day in Xi'an so we'll start from Wednesday! We were up at 6am today to check out and meet the group for our flight to Shanghai. The original plan was to get a second overnight train from Xi'an to Suzhou and then a bus to Shanghai. However Bruce was struggling to get us tickets due to it being the Chinese holiday, which meant lots of people were returning to the cities from Xi'an. So instead he booked u...

01 February 2009 Last night we left the hotel with all of our bags to get the bus to the train station. When we arrived we had to carry our backpacks for around half an hour through the station (the longest we've had to carry them so far - very heavy!) before we got to the waiting area. We paid 5 Yuan each (about 50p) to sit in the waiting area (definately worth it!) and waited for around an hour for our train. When we got to the train we were surprised as to h...

27 January 2009 Just a quick entry to say that we've arrived safely in Beijing! The flight took 9 hours but went quite quickly as we watched films, tv and had two meals. Our flight was underbooked (59 passengers out of a capacity for 350!) so we had extra room and attention from the 16 cabin crew onboard. I lay down on 4 seats with lots of pillows and blankets, which I've realised was actually more comfortable than the beds we've got now..! We're at the hostel ...