Ben Giles

The next morning it was time to move on, and trying to find the right bus stop was an absolute nightmare, with Chinese people directing us in all sorts of different directions, and eventually getting some poor Tuktuk woman to drive us, and all of our bags to the long distance bus station. When we finally got there we caught a monstrous series of buses and eventually shared a minibus with some Chinese students and made it up to Guoliangcun, which is a small and awesome village in the mountains, with a "ski resort" (one piste lacking somewhat in incline) and a very dodgy route connecting it to the world. To get there one had to drive off road, in a crudely carved tunnel/cliff path up some rather steep inclines, until eventually, you pass by a ... read more

As accommodation was so expensive in Shanhaiguan, I decided the next day to head on to Beijing, where I'd meet up with Pete, Hannah, her boyfriend, and Pete’s elder brother Simon. Beijing was actually really nice, I only spent a day there, so didn't get to do all of the cultural shizz that I'm sure will be around forever. I'm sure I’ll see it sometime in the future! Instead Pete, Simon, and I went exploring, and due to some conveniently open doors we got onto the roof of a skyscraper in the centre of the business district, and got some rather lovely piccies! However, it was getting chilly, so we got some food and headed back to our hostel where we started packing for our snowboarding trip! This involved some quite dodgy transport connections, and ended ... read more

By now I'd decided that Haerbin was probably a bit too cold for me, so I figured that I'd go on to somewhere slightly warmer...the North Korean border, why not!!! I got a train the next morning from Haerbin to Dandong, a town on the border with North Korea, which was quite interesting! There was a cool bridge that had been bombed by the US at some point, and now just ended mid river. In addition to that there was a cool stretch of Great Wall quite near to the town, so, after a shower, I figured I’d pop over there and climb some of it! It was really fun, and afforded some awesome views over the lake separating China from N.K, and the generally rather cool scenery that surrounded it. Whilst climbing it, however, I ... read more

Now Guilin is a big city, and we spent a grand total of about 15 minutes there before getting another bus to Yangshuo (about 1 1/2 hours down the road). I originally hadn't thought wed have time to come here...but I did have a few ideas of things we should do. The first of them was to do a cooking course with Cloud Nine restaurant. Our teacher took us to the farmers Market, where we saw all sorts of pretty dodgy looking things, dogs hanging by big spikes through their heads, all sorts of other meat...and a ridiculous amount of fish and vegetables. We bought a couple of ingredients for the dishes we had chosen to make (chinese dumplings, gongbao jiding, and a famous Yunnan dish, beer fish.) and headed back to the restaurant, and the ... read more

We finally arrived in Kunming after passing through some rather lovely scenery, and then headed to cloudland, a lovely little hostel which had brilliant maps of the area and directions on where to go. That day we went to the 'flower and bird market' which in fact was an awesome street where we ate crickets and bought quite a few lil prezzies for home..including real authentic, 100% peanut, peanut butter nomtious! There were also a load of places selling dogs! puppies, and birds which was quite sad. On new years eve we started off very early, and headed off to dragons gate, a reputedly beautiful set of carvings and buildings on the side of a ginormous mountain. It was quite an epic climb, especially as we hadn't really adjusted to the altitude yet, and we hadn't ... read more