Our final blog for China! It's crazy how fast our time here has gone. We arrived in Beijing after a 15 hour sleeper train from Shanghai. Beijing means 'North Capital' and used to be called Peking which means 'North and Peaceful City'. Once again we got cabs from the train station with a post-it note from Tori for the driver. The taxi stopped on a main road with no hotel in sight, but eventually we figured out that our hotel was down a little side street. ...

Ni hao ma? Wô hên hao! Our fifth destination in China was Shanghai, meaning 'Above the River'. Shanghai is a really cool place but sadly we only had 2 nights there. When we first arrived it was pouring with rain and despite being gone midday, the hotel couldn't get us checked in. Soaking wet and smelly, the group got lunch in a little restaurant attached to the hotel while Tori worked her magic. Soon enough, we checked in and headed out in the relentless ...

So, Xi'an! One of the four ancient capitals of China. Xi'an means 'west and peaceful city' and was a much bigger place than we expected. We have been keen to learn some mandarin and have mastered the basics. On the train to Xi'an, Max mixed with some locals and enjoyed some of their very strong rice wine and ham. Mr Wong was a friendly guy and keen to interact - Tori helped with lots of translating! Mr Wong stated that 'Chinese people are friendly but we c...

Mainland China has been quite a culture shock so far. For a start, the Chinese do not know how to queue. They have to be the first everywhere so they push their way to the front and run. They also love to spit and hack it up a lot. Despite their lack of manners, Chinese people are very friendly and are keen to interact with us even though they don't know a word of English. And we feel like celebrities! You really don't see many western people around mai...

Ni Hao from Yangshuo! We're on day 5 of our China tour, and enjoying it very much. We have a great group of people and everyone's up for a laugh and gets involved. When our time in Hong Kong came to an end, our tour guide, Tori, lead us all with our backpacks to the MTR which took us to the mainland border. There were a few problems with the group - someone lost their departure card and someone's China visa hadn't been activated, but after a while we all got...