Arrived in Hong Kong mid afternoon and checked into our hostel. Hong Kong is very westernised, just like a massive city in England! More people speak English here as well which is always helpful! We watched the light show on the first night before eating at a street cafe and going to one of the many night markets. We had to say goodbye to Peter, our guide, here as it is the end of the tour . Some of us were staying another few nights, so we went to a dodgy l...

Arrived at the Longji Rice Terraces mid afternoon and treked for about an hour up the terraces to our guesthouse at the top. Views here were absolutely stunning, I've never seen anything like it! The second day we were up early for our days trek over the terraces. The trek was really hard work, but well worth the pain! We ended up in a small village were we spent the night. As it was my birthday we did a pub crawl round the village - very funny going up and ...

After Shanghai we got a 23hr train ride, then a 2 hr bus ride to Yangsho. Wasn't too bad as we just slept must of the train - getting used to sleeping on hard beds (also helped that I was quite hungover!). Yangshou is a small town, with stunning views and narrow streets of shops, cafes and pubs. Life is much more chilled and relaxed here. We stayed in town on the first 2 nights, in a hostel called fawlty towers - didn't live up to its name as it was quite n...

In Shanghai at the moment. I thought Beijing was big and busy....nothing compared to here!! Can't get over the amount of people and traffic! Crossing a road takes forever, and the green man does NOT mean go - everyone just drives, weaving in and out the traffic and people. You have to just walk and hope for the best!! Really hot here, which isn't great mixed with the pollution. Keep trying to find air conditioned buildings! Off to Yangshou this afternoon - a 23h...

The day after the Great Wall trek we headed straight back to Beijing and caught the night train to Xian - a 13 hr train ride! We arrived here yesterday and checked into hostel, then headed out to the Muslim quarter to go shopping. That's when the earthquake started. Was quite scary when it happened - we were shopping at an outdoor market when the ground started shacking, all the locals just started running out of the market and we didn't realise at first what ...