After around 25 hours of travelling by coach, hard sleeper train and public bus we finally arrived in the idyllic Yangshuo. The scenery is like that from a postcard, although I can imagine that it was even more pretty before it got too touristy. The looming hills are visable from every point, but this is slightly marred by the KFC and the Macdonalds that are placed amongst the rustic looking guesthouses! Regardless of all the fast food chains and the bars, the pl...

After crossing the border we caught the train straight to our final hotel of the booked tour. This was situated in Kowloon, the main touristy section oif Hong Kong. Feeling a bit worse for wear after the long train ride the night before I really wanted to climb into bed, but we had just an hour to freshen up before heading out for lunch. Dodo had said that the restaurants here are very small so finding somewhere to house the whole tour group was slightly tricky! ...

Xián is out tour guides home town, althought Dodo did say she doesn't like to stay there for too long! The weather here was pretty gloomy for the 2 days we spent there, so the view from the city walls wasn't really worth a picture sadly. I was definitely feeling a bit washed out at this point as we had done so much in so little time and now the weather was bad I just wanted to get into bed for a day or two! However we had loads to see so we got on with it and ma...

After the overnight train which was what is known here a a 'hard sleeper' (cabins that are divided into 6 bunkbeds, top/middle and bottom with no doors) we arrived in Shanghai! We first were taken on an orientation walk with our guide Dodo through the busy streets lined with many western shops including zara and and various watch and sports shops. It was much more humid than Beijing and considerably more Western. People seemed to be more used to seeing people lik...

The first stop on our tour of China was Beijing. Knowing that the Olympics had been held there, Jack and I both expected the locals to be much more used to Westeners than they were. From the moment we stepped off of the plane we felt that we had a bit of an alien presence in Beijing as many of the people we passed seemed shocked to see us or gawped in utter amazement! Not being used to this kind of reception we both felt a little bit out of our comfort zone, espe...