Haniamoo

Xin chao!! Hanoi was quite a smack in the face of an introduction to Viet Nam for us, but we loved it! Now, after such an onslaught of motorbikes and city noise Viet Nam stunned us to silence once again with Ha Long Bay's unique calm beauty. It is a geological sight of wonder! Over thousands of years limestone karst peaks have been forming and moving out into the sea. According to government statistics there are exactly 1969 peaks in the area (coincidentally the same year that their revered former President Ho Chi Minh died). In actual fact there are over 2000 dotted around this bay. So what did we do when we got here?! How does one marvel at such beauty? One gets on a cruise!! This sounds a little too much like a typically ... read more

Gooooood morning Vietnam!!!!! And what a good morning it was... Not! After a sleepless 8 hours on a sleeper bus to get to the border we were expecting another 4 hours on a different bus. It actually took us NINE HOURS!! So we'd spent 17 hours solid on a bus. Draining.The silver lining is that we weaved in and out of Vietnam's gorgeous rural landscapes, jumping from rocky mountains to miles upon miles of flat rice paddies that glistened in the sun. We were also on a bus entirely full of natives, not a tourist in sight! We were definitely the centre of attention! Finally we arrived, although it took 5 Vietnamese men staring at a map to work out where in Hanoi we were. We were then greeted by a crashing wave of motorbikes in ... read more

Welcome to Yangshuo, my favourite city in China (as well as Beijing)!! A lot smaller and more rural looking than Guilin this city is an absolute gem. Tiny cobbled streets are full of touristy titbits but are quaint just the same. Then there's also an incredible night life! Our hostel had a roof top bar so we met many people from many countries around the world. Our favourite most interesting person was Zak from Canada who we nicknamed Turtle because he spoke like the turtle in the film Finding Nemo. He has been traveling for absolutely ages all over the world, really cool kid. Our first day there we hired bikes and rode to the Yulong river. Stunning views with peaks lining the riverside. We then jumped in and swam around amongst the bamboo rafts and ... read more

Having had a good go at the North Eastern side of China, it was time to throw ourselves into the hidden treasures of China's Southern cities: Guilin and Yangshuo!! Now, China is big. Beijing in itself is the same size as Belgium... and that's just one of it's cities. Pretty bloody huge! So when planning our trip we thought, yeah let's just hop onto this train to Guilin.. Hopping on actually means giving away 24 hours of your life to lying between an ironing board and the roof of a train. Luckily we relish such challenges anyway so we made friends with a Mexican and played many word games to keep us going, feasting on instant noodles! (It sounds like sacrilege eating instant noodles here but it's their equivalent to sandwiches! Everywhere you go they provide ... read more

Ni hao once again! I am getting a little behind on the old blogging as you may or may not have realised.. Thus it is time to speed things up a tad! So I last left you in Nanjing feeling a little underwhelmed, but a lot wiser on Sino-japanese relations. Our next stop was the long awaited Shanghai!!! After only a 3 hour train ride, easy going in comparison to our next train ride, we hit Shanghai hard! We wandered around to get a good feel for the city; skyscrapers litter the skies everywhere you look. Hidden in one part is the old quarter which was beautiful with typical Chinese architecture nestled in between vast, towering and modern buildings. We visited the gardens there and stared at some colossal fish and ... read more

Ni hao once again!! This time we have moved on to the Jiangsu province as a small stop off on the way to Shanghai. We took a highspeed train there so instead of taking 20 hours it took 6!! Noice. Having had such a jam-packed schedule in Beijing though, Nanjing came as a bit of a shock. There is not that much to do or see there but luckily we were only there for one full day. We did, however, learn a lot from the 1937 Nanjing massacre memorial hall that we visited; a real plunge into China's identity and experience of the Second World War. It was a very sombre moment in our travels but worth seeing for sure. Everything was respectfully presented but also full of gruesome images of the massacred victims.. Amongst some ... read more

Ni hao!! Wow China is incredible!! The last few days in Beijing have been our favourite actually. We got to walk along one of the seven ancient wonders of the world!!!! I still cant believe it. The Great Wall of China is just not the same until you've been there and seen it. Photos, no matter how good they are, do not do it justice. There are different parts to the wall you can go to, we chose the most touristy, 'Badaling'. To say the most touristy gives a bad impression really, touristy seems to be considered a pejorative now-a-days, but this was touristy for a very good reason. It was simply magnificent! It is the part of the wall that is most intact, having been restorted a lot in places, and you get to see ... read more

Hey guys!! I'm reallly sorry for lack of contact so far! We have been immersing ourselves in Chinese life and getting on the internet here is such a ma fan (new Chinese word we picked up, helll yes we're speaking Chinese! It means a hassel)! So now you know we didn't die on the way here, although we were pretty close after 27 hours of travel.. Our knees were destroyed from sitting on the plane, but we made friends with our first travel buddy who was in fact Chinese although spoke Queen's English. He was called Zin. I told him he sounds like a Tekken 3 character. He may not have been so impressed with that.. ANYWAY! So China!! Brief overview of things we've been up to: Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City!!! Absolutely incredible! The square ... read more

The time has finally come!! THE PHILLIPS SISTERS HIT SOUTH-EAST ASIA!!! In an attempt to comemorate this amazing moment in our lives as well as informing all our friends and fam of what we're doing I have decided to start up my very first travel blog. Being a blogger virgin please be patient with my waffle(s) and general IT incompetence. Alors, there are only two days to go until final departure and I find myself at good old Papi Phillips' house! A lot of tea drinking, cheese on toast eating, pipe smoking and national anthem singing (OK maybe not the last two but you get the idea!) is being done so as to fill up on all things quintessentially British before I get bombarded by strange and wonderful Chinese traditions! Scorpions and manky eels AHOY!!!... read more