We arrived in Guilin a few hours before the couple we met from Yorkshire (who had decided to stay in the same hostel as us since they couldn't bear to be apart from us) and we waited at the bar for them with some drinks. When they arrived, Bryan had harped on about McDonald's so much that we were all craving it. Fortunately there was one a stones throw from our hostel so we wandered over and it didn't disappoint. Unfortunately McDonald's has been too common an oc...

So after the hassle surrounding getting onto the train to Chengdu, we were just happy to make it, even if it was just to an open plan hard sleeper carriage. A good nights rest was needed but we realised that was unlikely when the lights remained on and the music played until late, only to then start up again early in the morning (Sara managed to get by with her ear plugs and eye mask though!) Nonetheless we were hoping that that was all the chaos and bad luck beh...

Because it was impossible to get a train to Xian and we wrote off buses due to safety concerns, we had to fly. It was only an hour and a half journey but it was 4 hours delayed and the airport was so badly organised they never told us anything. We could only hear announcements by our gate so we couldn't wonder off and they didn't say how long we'd been delayed by or what the reason was. After an hour and a half delay we boarded the plane but the plan just sat the...

So our first taste of Chinese trains was an overnight one from Beijing to Shanghai. There was an option to take the bullet train, but being rational the time saved didn't warrant the extra costs, even if the little boy inside of me (no I'm not a cannibal) wished we had taken the super fast choo choo! However the train we took was by no means shabby - comfy and our own TV at the bottom of each bed showing Rambo...in mandarin but what Stallone film actually needs d...

We were excited and nervous in equal measures about going to China. Everything we had heard and read told us if you don't speak any Chinese then you need to book a tour. We tried but they were seriously expensive and not on the right dates. We thought perhaps when we got to Beijing we would be able to sort something out and we did consider not going to China because it was so hard to sort out visas. The flight over was great as we had free food and our choice o...