We made our way to Xi'an on our 1st sleeper train. Being budget travellers we took the cheapest 'hard' sleeper, being top of three.Luckily (cos you couldn't sit up and getting up and down was a tricky task!), lights were out at 10pm. The locals in with us were friendly one heading for a Nokia staff team building trip and a merry man who kept apologising for drinking too much, whilst trying to chat with us about the Olympics. Xi'an was the smoggiest place eve...

Hi again, Sorry for the delay, been a bit slack on the updates. We now have the pics from the Great Wall visit on 28th Oct, which is pretty much a huge wall, but still impressive in size and height, one of those things you cannot miss out if visiting China. The pics show the views we got - a bit hazy, but still pretty clear. One of the highlights was the toboggan thing you got to go on to get back down, Tracy was a bit anxious at first but loved it and I manag...

Morning all, Just back from a trip to the great wall and will post pics and blog later on that. We are set to leave Beijing tonight after 6 days here and have really enjoyed it here. We stayed in a Hostel right in the heart of the city, close to all the major sites, but still managed to get lost on a daily basis! Beijing has felt more relaxing and we haven't stood out so much here, although we do feel like local celebs, when visiting Tiananmen Sq we have freq...

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 ...