Hi Everyone! Hope you haven't missed us too much, as we haven't updated our blog for over a week! Well, the first few days were spent in Hong Kong, where we comsumed a lot of noodles and dim sum (or sum dum thing, as my Dad and Dave Schnoll like to call it!). The weather wasn't great - very foggy, so we didn't get up to much, but it cleared up for one day and we went up the 'peak' to see the views over the harbour... very impressive! I also had my palm read. ...

Today is our last day in Beijing. We've packed a LOT of sightseeing into the last few days.... the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the Great Wall, amongst the highlights! We have about a million pictures of chinese buildings - not sure we're going to be able to remember what they all are when we finally get them uploaded! The day at the wall was probably our favourite so far. We set off at 6.30am for the three hour journey to the section of the wall th...

Arrived in Xi'an on the morning of the 29th. Thank you Tom for putting us in touch with Jessie and her parents, who were extremely generous and made our stay in Xi'an very enjoyable. Jessie's dad picked us up from the station and took us for our first real Chinese breakfast. It was in the kind of restaurant that we have walked past many times but not had the guts to go in!! He orderd for us, so we weren't sure what we were getting. When it came, it was a bowl o...

We made it from Harbin to Beijing on another over ngiht train!! Feels like we've been on the train for the past two weeks and nothing else!! Beijing is gearing up for the olympics, lots of construction going on, seems like they are leaving it to last minute bit like the Greeks! Much more inviting than Harbin, and much less people spitting and clearing their noses, seemed like that was a national sport back there!! We've been eating loads of nice food, lots of s...

We made the five day train trip from Ekaterinburg to Harbin arriving on 24th Jan. Met a guy called John (from London) in Ekaterinburg who was doing the same journey as us and ended up in the same cabin. With the three of us we had a crazy chinese lady, called Oliya (?!?!?). She spoke no English, but we managed to communicate with the help of our language guide in the back of our guidebook and lots of hand signals! She had a daughter called Anna who from what ...