Alicia: Day 26: We were really excited about going to Guilin as everyone we met only had great things to say about the area which was great. Woke up in the train from Chengdu at 8am and looked out the window to see a beautiful river surrounded by hills and traditional houses and little bamboo rafts and fishing boats. What a view to wake up to :) Once we'd arrived at the train station we made our way to Wada Hostel with no trouble (finally a easily located hoste...

Mike: Day 17: We took the train from Shanghai to the old water town of Suzhou. The train was only a couple of hours and when we arrived we decided to try to walk with all our stuff to the hostel. We took the wrong turn almost immediately though and ended up wandering round for half a hour until we gave up and got a taxi. Good job too, we were a long way out. We check into our hostel. The place seemed nice if a little more run down than we are used to. The floors ...

Mike: Day 10: Our attempts to get up early fail as usual. Initially waking up at 8:30, then 9. Finally making it outside just before 11am. Not before changing our room and booking our onward journey to Xi' An the following day (888RMB - about £88 for the both of us). We get some breakfast at our local bakery "Auspicious Phoenix", eating it outside the tube station due to their "no food or drink" policy. We paid 2 Yuan (20p) for a go-anywhere ticket and spent t...

Alicia: Day1: We finally stepped off the plane in the Northern Hemisphere around 6pm Sat 20th Oct. As we'd arrived after sunset we could see all the skyscrapers and the multitude of lights the whole bus trip to our hostel. We were staying in the Wan Chai / Cauaeway Bay area on the island in a place called YesInn which was pretty nice with triple decker bunk beds :D Was a long day ( we'd got up at 2am for our flight from Cairns) so after a quick stint in the mass...