Since our last blog we have been in two small towns - Kangding for three nights and Xiangcheng for two. KANGDING Kangding is a stop over for most people to get from Chengdu (where we saw the panda's) into western Sichuan. Once you head west of Chengdu the mountains start and traffic slows. We took our very first Chinese bus from Chengdu to Kangding. We had planned on finding a hostel in Kangding, but since we got off the bus late and it was raining, we decided to follow a little old lady to her hotel and she hooked us up with a clean double room for 80 yuan. Our first double bed and our cheapest accommodations in China! The room ended up being pretty nice. It was cold and the walls were thin (we could ... read more

Xi'an quickly became our favourite Chinese city so far. The large cities in China are so well run that it's hard to not love them. Getting around is unbelievably easy, the streets are spotlessly clean, there is plenty of shopping, a million places to eat, tonnes of historic sites and enough culture to keep you as busy as you want to be. Our guesthouse was fantastic! We would definitely recommend Shuyuan Hostel to anyone spending time in Xi'an. Not only does it have friendly helpful staff, the entire hostel is immaculately clean, the three courtyards are great places to hang out and they have pets. There is a beautiful golden retriever named Terra and a fluffy white cat whose name we didn't catch (Ty decided to call it snowball). These loveable animals are just as friendly ... read more

Pingyao is an ancient Chinese city surrounded by the original walls built over 1000 years ago. Only one section of wall had to be rebuilt after a portion collapsed a few years ago. We wanted to spend some time in Pingyao mainly to break up our long trip from Beijing to Xi'an and unwind after seeing Beijing. Once we arrived, we checked into our hostel and, as usual, hit the streets. The main streets are lined with vendors that at first glance appear to have fantastic genuine Chinese relics. Old chess boards, coins, tools etc. blew us away until we realized every store has the exact same things and they weren't really as old as they looked. There was also an abundance of stone carvings, jade jewlery/statues, and tour groups. Pingyao really is beautiful. We escaped ... read more

After hours and hours and hours of greulling research and stress, Tyler came to the conclusion that Hong Kong was going to be our best option for obtaining Chinese Visa's. Usually you're required to provide exit flight info and reservations for accomodation during your stay; neither of which we could show since we are leaving China by bus to Vietnam and have no clue where we will be staying along the way. Originally we wanted to use a visa agent that has plenty of recomendations online, but it turns out our hostel was able to get us a visa hassle free. While our time was very limited in the city, we saw enough to realize how well run Chinese cities really are (we are going to consider Hong Kong part of China for our blog, there ... read more

Danau Toba Part II This blog is being written on a train to Beijing so bear with us while we figure out where we left off. Pretty sure we told you about our motorcycle trip to the north end of the island so we can pick up after that... After seeing the north end of the island, we had yet another “nothing” day. That means we sat on our porch reading, taking regular swim breaks and not going much farther than our guesthouse or Joe's (a nearby restaurant with killer Chicken ala Batak) for food. With so much time left, we decided we wanted to see more of the island so we rented a motorbike the following day and headed south. Our map had a barely legible written arrow that said “views” so we wanted to ... read more