Hello, We are in Hong Kong and having a great time. We haven't updated our site for quite a while: after Xian we went to Chengdu and saw th Giant Pandas (including a little baby one, aww). Then we flew to Guillin as we couldn't hack the 31 hours on a train, and from there a short bus ride to Yangshuo, which is a really touristy place. It is surrounded by beautiful karst scenery, and feels like a Mediterranean resort. We enjoyed being able to get western food ag...

Hi, We are in Xian, home of the Terracotta army. We went and visited them yesterday. It was quite impressive, although more for the amount of stuff they haven't actually unearthed yet - it's a big site. We then spent ages haggling for souvenir warriers made of genuine terracotta (?!) which the Chinese hawkers enthusiatically bash together, scratch and generally abuse to show you they really are terracotta. Ed has the haggling skills down pat now, walking away s...

Hello from Pingyao, Pingyao is an ancient walled city arounf 400 miles south west of Beijing. We have been here for a couple of days. There's not much to do here, except wander the streets and lanes, and peruse the souvenir and 'antiques' shops. We've been trying not to buy too many things, with only a modicum of success. Tonight we're getting the overnight train to Luoyang, where we're going to see some more caves like the ones we saw in Datong. We hadn't pl...

Hi, We got an overnight train to Datong last night. We could only get a hard sleeper ticket, which meant there were 6 beds to each comparment and no door. Still apart from being woken up several times for the attendant mopping the floor (eg at 3 in the morning) it was fine. It was quite sad to be leaving Beijing as we had enjoyed it there. Datong has the Cloud Ridge Caves which we visited this morning. They are fifth century caves carved out of the rock contain...

Hello! We are weary after a couple of days of sight-seeing in and around Beijing. On Tuesday we went to the Forbidden City, and spent several hours looking round the various palaces and gardens. On Wednesday we went to the Summer Palace, which was the summer retreat of the royal family, on the outskirts of Beijing. It's a large park containing an enormous lake. It is very picturesque, with bridges and pagodas and other pretty buildings on the lakeshore and isla...