Ni Hao, This is a bit late as we arrived in Taishan on 19th October and left on 22nd, mainly due to the recovery time needed following the climb of Mt Taishan. Arrived in Taishan following an epic 7 hr train ride on a fairly basic train, packed full of locals and their wares, including the evicting of locals from our seats. It was nerve racking at first but all were very friendly and mucked in cramming luggage into any available nook or cranny. Having arrived...

Hi again, Arrived in Nanjing on 17th, as a stop en route to Beijing (we changed the route to bypass Qufu). Nanjing is lovely, a city that in parts is different to anything we've seen. A good mix of some modern with the old with everything from the random dancing in the street, to the amazing and cheap food stalls on the street and the numerous lanterns lining the river (we were too slow in working out the night mode on the camera & the lanterns were turned ...

Good morning (written at 1.30am), As you can guess Tracy is out like a light after covering about 10km on foot today and just finishing off a large Tsingtao at the Hostel. I have now managed to upload what are best described as unimpressive mobile photos, will sort out batteries for the camera tomorrow! My fave is the bamboo scaffolding, H&S bores would have a field day with this in the UK. We finally have a plan and are looking to travel by train to Nanj...

Hi, We have arrived safely into the madness of Shanghai, despite the best efforts of the traffic, which seems to be found on the pavement as often as the roads! The t'interweb is a bit hit and miss at the hostel and is all in Chinese hence only 1 pic, which is also sideways (if you hadn't noticed!). Thanks for the lovely messages, more news and some decent photos will of course follow. Al & Tracy x