Travelling on the highest train line in the world, made for an exciting experience! We spent two days gazing out at the unfolding scenery and two nights sleeping quite well. The only draw back was the toilet. There was supposed to be one Western toilet and one Asian squat toilet, for each carriage, but unfortunately the Western toilet was out of action the whole trip! We survived of course.We were met at the train station by our Tibet guide, Ngawang, and taken to...

Chengdu is one of few places you can see Pandas and also has a World Heritage listed irrigation system close by, so we chose this as a stopover point between South Korea and Tibet. It is a bit disconcerting in these times of active earthquakes around the world, to be standing right in the epicenter of where a 2008 earthquake rocked the Sichuan Province, killing (at the Government's estimate locals believe more) 200,000 people and leaving millions homeless. W...

It is of some interest when your hotel room has an "Escape Rope" complete with mask and lantern. Especially when you are on the 8th floor! I'm not sure if I feel reassured by its presence or alarmed at the prospect of being rescued from the 8th floor by dangling on a rope, wearing my mask and holding my lantern! This is assuming I was the lucky? One of having the privilege of using the equipment, given their appeared to be only one set. Our hotel is a modern ...

"Won, too, tree, clik!" We are on a tour of the South and East of JeJu Island and our wonderful taxi driver, who we have hired for the whole day, loves cameras and insists on taking our photo with Avan's camera, at every available opportunity. We rarely put ourselves in photos, preferring to capture the scenery, people or animals, but our driver insisted “it is the Korean way” so we went with the flow and now have a lovely collection of some 26 ph...

Love Motels are a Korean Phenomenon - and an excellent one at that.For the equivalent of $A45 a night we are ensconced in luxury only known in 5 star plus hotels. The catch is Love Motels are hard to find and, well, there might be a little nocturnal noises of the amorous kind to contend with. We don't mind given the upside. Back in Seoul we ended up in a love motel by default, but this time we sought one out on the advice of a fellow backpacker who said, "You...