So we arrived in ninh binh late evening, when we got off the bus there was this guy waiting there offering us to stay at his hotel right near where the bus stopped, we were all (Rob & Ross are still with us) a bit wary about him, but turned out his hotel was the one in the lonely planet that we wanted to stay in anyway. rooms were ok, privates with tv's :) for $10 for the room. We all went straight to bed for an early night and to watch some tv, they have great movie channels in vietnam. [View Full Entry]

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So we got up ready for our bus to pick us up for the trip at 8am Sunday morning. Bus journey was ok, we had a tour guide who wasn’t that great. Spoke english, but was still pretty difficult to understand him, let alone all the other tourists where English wasn’t their first language! The bus ride to the boats took around 4 hours then we had to wait around quite a while for the boat. The boat (when it finally came) was lovely. Really nice restaurant area, a top deck area with sun lounges and the rooms were at the [View Full Entry]

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So Thursday we finally made our way out Yangshou after spending over a week not doing an awful lot there!! We got a bus to Nanning, city closest to Vietnam where we were leaving by bus friday morning. We arrived late in the evening, so just booked into our hostel, bought our bus tickets for the morning and had an early night. Our bus left Nanning at 7.30am Friday morning!!! So early for us! The journey was fine, a few hours to the border, border crossing was fine, then a few more hours and we were in Hanoi in North Vietnam. [View Full Entry]

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SO after a good nights sleeping after arriving in Guilin last Saturday (7th Nov) I still felt pretty rough, we were planning on just staying that one night and then getting the bus to Yangshou where we had some volunteer work set up, but we decided to stick around for another night till I felt better. After finally getting out of bed in the afternoon, a shower and nice walk started to make me feel better. Guilin was a beautiful city, right in the south of China, the weather was warm and its locatied right next to the Li River, although [View Full Entry]

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So we arrive in Xi'an around 9amlast Tuesday 3rd Nov. We had had the worst nights sleep...after opting for the cheap hard seats which actually weren't that bad, just like normal seats on a coach, but just so difficult to sleep on and the carriage is a lot more busier with locals and lots of people, people were even standing...11 train journey too! We woke up so many times during the night hardly got any sleep, so as soon as we arrived at the hostel we went straight back to bed :) The hostel we had booked after someone reccommended it [View Full Entry]

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Okay so I have now added pictures to the last two blogs so if you click on previous in the top left hand corner you can go back and look if you wish ;) So after an amazing nights sleep and refreshing ourselves we got up and heading out in Beijing on Tuesday!! Was amazing to be here are being in desolate Mongolia for so long. Our clothes were amazingly filthy and we needed to put them in the washing but needed some extras so we decided on our first day we would head to one of the infamous chinese markets, [View Full Entry]

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So the rest of our evening back in UB after thoroughly cleaning ourselves was spent completely chilling out watch movies :) Before we left on our trip I had asked my sister not to go into labour early (baby was due 28th) as we would be on our trip in the desert with no signal, phones dead and I would be the last person to know!! Managed to get in contact with lara and luckily there was no sign of baby yet, that was until I woke up Sunday morning with a text from Lara to say she was in labour [View Full Entry]

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DAY 1 Weds 14th OCT So last Wednesday (14th Oct) we set off nice and early for our trip around Mongolian countryside. Our quite drink the night before turned into a few drinks, going onto a club with a load of people from the hostel and not getting home till 3am, so the start of our trip we were all pretty tired and sleepy. Not only that, but Ste and I both woke up with some pretty painful stomach cramps...luckily it was only cramps, but still took a few tablets to stop anything from happening during our long journey ahead of [View Full Entry]

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So we left Irkutsk by overnight train to another Russian town called Ulan Ude and then from here we caught a bus to Ulaan Baatar, the capital city of Mongolia. The trip cost about 35 pounds each, whereas doing a straight train like most people do would have cost twice as much. It is also a lot quicker going across the border as you only have a bus full of people whereas on the train it can take 7 or more hours to check everyone on the whole train. The border crossing was fine, a little tedious, as Russian officials check [View Full Entry]

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So got the bus from Suzdal back to Vladmir to wait for our train that we had booked to Novosibirsk. It was a bit confusing because you have a train number on your tickets and a departure board except the departure board had a different time to our tickets...we waited around till that time and it suddenly changed to the right time we had, so all was good. We headed to our platform to find there was ni access! There were people waiting on all different platforms as this one was closed off having some work done and there were all [View Full Entry]

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