Today we only had the morning to go out and do something as we were heading off to the train station again, this time for a 17 hour overnight train to Shanghai. We all met for breakfast at the hostel and discussed what things people wanted to do. Everyone wanted to do different things so Roy, Craig & Jess and I went off to hire a bike and cycle the 14km around the top of the Xi'an city wall and the other guys split up and did other things.We walked around t...

What a day we had today.... but firstly, Happy Birthday Craig!We all got early today as we had trips planned today, Emma & Jane headed off to visit some pandas and the rest of us headed off to the local bus station to catch a bus to the Huashan Mountains. After catching a bus to the main bus terminal we sat on our bus for about 45 mins waiting for it to fill up before we could leave. About 45 minutes into our journey we hit a major traffic jam so our bus driver...

We arrived at Xi'an in the rain at around 09:30 and we met by the mini bus from the hostel and were taken back to drop our bags off and have some breakfast. The breakfast was not as nice as the previous hostel but they did manage to serve it to us within a few minutes and all together unlike the previous hostel that would take over 30 mins sometimes. Showers then followed and a quick change of clothes.The plan was to walk around the city with Roy so that we...

I did set my alarm for 4am just so I could get up, walk along some of the wall and see the sunrise at 6:30am but when I opened my curtains in the hotel room all I could see was fog. I would have really liked to have got some nice pictures of the wall at sunrise, but the few extra hours sleep that I got instead were really good too.We returned back to Beijing in the morning and were dropped off at the Silk Market and told to be back here in 7 hours so that we cou...

Today was our first trip away from Beijing, so we had an early start beginning with a 3 hour bus trip out of the city and over to the Great Wall of China where we would complete an 11km walk along the wall. The weather forecast for today was rubbish and leaving Beijing it was pouring down so we were all expecting a 5 hour trek along the wall in the rain.We got to the drop off point for the bus, which was all a bit commercialised with souvenir shops and a ticket ...