It's been a quiet day today on this, our last full day in China. We had a lie-in this morning and then popped into the hotel travel office to book our bus tickets to Hekou on the Vietnamese border. It cost us a staggering 112 Yuan each for the 8-hour journey, which works out at just £8 - how cheap is that? And we've been led to believe that Vietnam will be even cheaper than China so hopefully we'll be able to claw back some of the overspending we had to do in Japan. We were due to meet up with [View Full Entry]

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Today we were off to the bird and flower market with our new friends and this time we didn't leave anything to chance with the buses. We skipped the hotel breakfast which is proving to be too greasy for us and got to the bus stop nice and early. Surprise, surprise, because we weren't in a rush the bus turned up really quickly. It was packed to the brim with commuting Chinese so we took a chance and waited for the next one to turn up, which it did just 2 minutes later. We were at our meeting point with almost [View Full Entry]

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In Chinese tradition there is always a yin and yang that go together, like opposite forces of one another. How appropriate then that after such a brilliant day out yesterday, we were faced with the opposite experience today. I guess you just aren't allowed to have it good all the time. The problems started this morning when we wanted to make our hostel booking for our next leg of the tour which will be in Sapa, Vietnam. We have been using a tea house that has a couple of cheap but dodgy computers to update the blog but notcied there were [View Full Entry]

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In true Bill and Ted style, today we had yet another most excellent adventure. Today's destination was Shilin and the magical stone forest. We started the day with possibly the most uncomfortable journey ever - on the back seat of the minibus, right over the axle. We spent 2 hours cursing every time we went over a bump or hit a pothole and believe me there were a lot. If you are considering ever travelling on foreign roads by bus, I seriously suggest you find any other seat as you will otherwise end up wondering if you'll ever be able to [View Full Entry]

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The Stone Forest at Shilin was one of the most amazing places we've see so far on out travels. We took over 200 photos so here's a few of the best ones.... [View Full Entry]

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Continuing our theme from last night, we decided to check out some more prices and options for getting to Vietnam this morning. The hotel travel agent had tried to tell us there was no train to Vietnam from Kunming but the Rough Guide says otherwise. Because we came to mistrust the staff in the hostel in Chengdu, we were sceptical about the information provided by this travel office too. Therefore the first part of the day involved getting to the train station. This was easy enough by bus but once we got there, there was no information we could make use [View Full Entry]

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We flew into Kunming yesterday (11th July) and the flight with the local airline was very pleasant indeed. Had a bit of turbulance but a really smooth landing - Glynn is cool as a cucumber when it comes to flying and you would think that I would be too given all the travelling I've done in the past but it seems the older I get, the more nervous I'm getting about flying - not so good for a round the world trip!! The minute we got through the arrivals gate we sensed that Kunming was very different to Chnegdu. The first [View Full Entry]

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Chengdu still hasn't won us over even though we've been here for a few days now. Thankfully the discovery of Sim's Cozy Guesthouse provided a much-needed escape from life at the hotel and at the Mix Hostel and we liked it there so much that we booked our tour to the Panda Breeding Centre with them. We had originally intended to try and reach the place ourselves but after 2 foiled attempts, an organised tour seemed like the easiest option and we're glad we did it that way. It was an early start setting out for the panda centre as most [View Full Entry]

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While we have some time to kill before catching our bus to Vietnam, it seems high time I uploaded some more photos. this time it's from Chengdu and I'll try and get the Kunming pics on here as soon as poss. Enjoy! [View Full Entry]

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Time for some cute and cuddly hairy bears (and I'm not just talking about Glynn!). Are you ready? It's panda time! [View Full Entry]

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