Australia! Land of kangaroos, boomerangs and sports-mad ozzys. We couldn't believe our luck when we arrived in Sydney to blazing hot sunshine - after 3 weeks in chilly china, this was just what we needed! And to be greated by a familiar face at the airport and know that we didn't have the stress of haggling with taxis or figuring out the train routes to the nearest hostel was great too. Our first two weeks in Australia were to be spent with relatives - in Gosford, NSW. From the minute we got off the plane we suddenly began to realise that [View Full Entry]

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Apologies for our very delayed blog for Shanghai.... After leaving the Yangtze river cruise (on a very rickety cliff top path by minibus) we arrived in Yichang - about 1 hr later to board a sleeper coach to Shanghai. We got off the minibus with our tour guide (who was going to see us on to our sleeper coach safely) - only to realise we had left our treasure vietnamese painting behind - which we had haggled long and hard for. So our tour guide did a mad dash for the mini bus as it drove off into the distance. He [View Full Entry]

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The Yangtze river is the third largest river in the world and the Three Gorges between Chongqing and Yichang are one of the most visited sights in China. There are various cruise options for this route, the cheapest being the Chinese tourist boat where hardly any English is spoken, cabins are basic and food is notoriously bad. Being backpackers, this is the one we had opted for. We had both read the reviews on the internet and knew what we were letting ourselves in for - but the review I am writing now is probably going to be one of the [View Full Entry]

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Chongqing surprised us both. We had read in the Lonely Planet that it is nothing more than 'concrete city' - a stop-off on the way to a Yangtze Cruise - so we didn't expect to see bright neon lights, swanky restaurants and a Hong Kong style skyline across the river. But that was what we found. We had taken a bus from Chengdu to Chongqing. The journey was only around 4 hours and so we arrived early evening and jumped in a taxi to our hostel. Unfortunately the staff at our hostel spoke very little English so we had a few [View Full Entry]

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The sleeper train in 'Hard' class from Beijing to Xi'an had been fine. We were expecting literally a plank of wood to sleep on judging by the name of the class - but we had a mattress of sorts to sleep on and a plump pillow, quilt and get this - a tv. Okay so we had to share it between six of us it only had chinese channels - but who cares, it was a tv after all. We wondered what the first class (or 'soft sleeper') was like if this was ours! The difference in price between soft and [View Full Entry]

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Unfortunately the day did not start off well. We got up ready to go and visit the Summer Palace (about 10km away) which is apparently a must see while in Beijing. We caught the correct bus - which was a good start, and kept an eye on the map to see where our stop was (we had to get off and change buses half way through). As the bus journey went on I became increasingly anxious. Chinese buses are just as hair raising as in Vietnam, India and most of the countries we had visited so far - and the bus [View Full Entry]

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This was the big one - the day of The Great Wall! As with the Taj Mahal - one of the seven wonders of the world and probably a once in a lifetime opportunity.Long anticipated, and expectations running high we set the alarm for 6.30 in order to get down to Tiananman Square to catch a tour bus over to the wall. There are several 'parts' of the wall you can visit on a tour from Beijing. We found it difficult to book a tour to the less touristy part of the wall (as recommended by LP) because we were out [View Full Entry]

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We had a pretty good nights sleep in our hostel in Beijing. They have heating here - and actually use it which is a novelty. In north Vietnam it had been freezing and everytime we spoke to the reception staff they brought extra blankets rather than turning the heating on! We took a tube down to Tiananman Square and then walked a short distance to the Forbidden City. The Lonely Planet advises a full day at the Forbidden City - and they are absolutely right. Inside the city walls it is massive - easily one days' worth of exploring or more. [View Full Entry]

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We took connecting flights the night before from Saigon to Singapore and then Singapore to Beijing and eventually arrived here at midnight where we were picked up and taken to our hostel to sleep. It is cold in China!!!! Okay - not as cold as we had heard it was in January and February (for the fist time in years they had snow here and chaos broke out on the transport system), but still it was coats weather - which was a shock to our system after the heat of South Vietnam. On our first day in Beijing we got up [View Full Entry]

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We had booked a tour to the Mekong Delta and were really looking forward to it. We got up pretty early in the morning, took a mini bus for about 1.5 hrs to a boat station in My Tho, Mekong Delta. From here we took a tour boat across the Mekong to the first of the stops. On the first island we watched coconut candy being made and tried some which was lovely. It is like toffee - and they add other ingredients like banana or chocolate to create different varieties. Once they have scraped the inside of coconut out they [View Full Entry]

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