Malaysia is a relaxing delight after China. The sun is bright, the sky is blue and the people are pleased to see us. A melting pot of cultures and religions much of Malaysia is occupied by descendants of both Chinese and Malay who for the most part live harmoniously together. Georgetown, a town in Penang an island off the west coast of Malaysia, has been named by Unesco as a sight of historic interest because of the colonial buildings which still occupy much of t...

Why d'you need a brolly when it's sunny? Get a hat for goodness sake, then I wont have to wear protective goggles and a hard hat to avoid the spokes. Beijing was the only place in China where we managed to escape the rain but even that wasn't enough to endear us to its charms, or reduce the number of umbrellas. Despite the beautiful parks and famous sites we left feeling weary and tired. The air was sticky and oppressive for most of the time, and although hot the...

What we feel about a place is often influenced by the type of experience we have there: whether we feel welcome, whether we have a chance to really explore all aspects of a place, whether we like the food, and the people we meet. It was taking longer than usual to like China, mainly due to the awful rainy weather which was hampering our meandering, but Shanghai changed all that thanks to the hospitality of two of our past Host students Yan and Miranda. Having sta...

We arrived in Xian to another downpour, so felt the only sensible option was to try and commandeer a taxi to our hotel. The hotel had written with directions prior to arrival and told us to expect the fare to be 17 yuan. Initially we couldn't find the taxi rank, so ducking umbrellas and large puddles we headed for the information centre across the concourse outside. They didn't speak much English , but seemed to recognise the word taxi and pointed towards the sid...

Many of you have asked how we cover the long distances in China. Well for the most part here the answer is trains. We loved using the trains in India as we found you always knew where you would end up, something which was always a surprise when using the buses, so we're keen to compare transport in the two countries. The Kunming to Xian sleeper is a 35 hour journey, so we'd opted for what the Chinese call soft sleeper (at least they would if the spoke English). T...