2 trains, two taxis and a bus ride later we arrived in beautiful beautiful Yangshuo! I had a rather embarrassing situation where I started jabbering away at normal volume about how annoying the man next to me was, coughing and fidgeting all the time (no one here speaks English remember so I felt safe) and also he left his flask and went for a wonder and I mentioned how there could be a bomb in it..random I know! Well a you can imagine I was rather shocked when th...

Oh I just love it when I leave the blog a few days..so much to catch up on! I'm currently in a small city just outside of Chongquing killing time before my bullet train to another city, followed by a night train to Yangshuo..it's been a busy few days! On the 11th we arrived in the big ugly city of Chongquing early in the morning and took a taxi to a lovely crummy hotel that charged by the hour (!?) so that we could pay for 1 room to recharge and dump our bags i...

Today we were woken up again by the school exercises and sleepily got ready for a day at the terracotta warriors (said to be the 8th wonder of the ancient world), luckily we'd packed the night before this time so no watch could hinder us! We left the hotel at 9 with a local guide who told us about the warriors and how they were built the first emperor of China (a member of the Quin dynasty) about 2000 years ago. He was also the emperor who joined all the provinc...

On the 7th we woke up feeling rather worse for ware after our night out at Soho, Shanghai but were keen to get on our next night train, sleep, then see the next city on our trip. This would have been made a whole lot less stressful if my watch hadn't decided to slow down randomly for the only 2 hours I needed it in action. We had to check out by 12 and at 10 Mairi and I decided to have a bit more of a nap and then to get up and pack. I kept checking my watch (whi...

Don't worry, I haven't surccumbed to bird flu, panic not, despite the fact that I am in Shanghai at the height of bird flu panic time :) On the 4th we spent the day cafe hopping and escaping the chaos of grave sweeping day in china where everyone has 3 days holiday to pay respects to their ancestors and burn paper versions of their favourite things so their dead relatives will receive them..strange I know! Beijing was madness with families using the holiday to ...