After another long overnight train ride, we arrived in Beijing, the capital of China. While being a little more prepared this time, we stepped out again into the cold, stood freezing, and looked up at the mammoth Western Train Station welcoming us to the city. From here we looked at our map to find out where we needed to go and decided that the subway was only a couple blocks away, so we would head towards that. After twenty minutes of walking with all of our pac...

Our eighteen hour train journey in the normal chair class brought us to Xian in a semi-delusional state. We stepped out of the train and into a climate that we had barely felt for our ten months abroad... the cold! Then we walked out of the station and saw the massive and imposing city walls that were built in the Ming Dynasty in 1370 and instantly knew that we had come to the right place, the former imperial capital of China. This city was well-known in ancient...

Let's just say... be on time if you are taking a train in China! It was definitely my fault for playing around on the internet a little too long, but we missed our 48 hour train to Tibet by 30 seconds! Luckily, they were exceptionally nice and booked us on the train for the next day with no extra charge and actually gave us money back since they had to change where our bunks were located. With that settled, we made it for the second train the next day and embarke...

As we entered China, I expected, as I believe nearly everyone does, to see communism in its most stereo-typical form... dark and cloudy days with big dull concrete block structures, police constantly peaking over your shoulder, and people that are shy and quiet because they are afraid of who is watching or listening. Now, it was a dark, cloudy and rainy day when we entered China, and I instantly felt that it was going to be hard to travel around because after lea...