We arrived in Japan on the 26th July after two full days on our ferry from Shanghai. The ferry was a much more luxurious one than we were used to, with our cruise down the Yangtze River, with numerous activities for entertainment including DVDs, Table Tennis and the fun night time activity of Karaoke. Our Italian friend Davide's version of YMCA was definitely something to write home about ('eeets fun to stay at der Y M C A' all in a cheery comedy European way), as well as a strip tease during Sweet Caroline by a Canadian guy we had met [View Full Entry]

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June 24 Having seen Chengdu and visited the main sights of the area (namely the Panda Reserve and the Giant Buddha) we decided to move on to our next port of call - Chongqing (haha its funny you see because it’s a port). The aim here was to find a cheap cruise down the Yangtze River so that we could see the Three Gorges and the famous Three Gorges Dam. In China they have 3 cities that are known as the three furnaces because of how hot they can get in the Summer, one of these is Chongqing. Chongqing is one [View Full Entry]

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June 20 Having finally and emotionally finished our teaching (there were many tears, mostly the kids however) we started our freedom by making the possibly risky trip to Chengdu, home of the Giant Panda. Chengdu is in the Sichuan province that was hit by an earthquake on the 12th May. However, after much research into where the earthquake had hit we decided that it was still worth a trip. The Sichuan province is the 5th largest in China and is slightly larger than Germany and about twice the size of UK. Not only did we need to make sure that we [View Full Entry]

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Qufu is famous for being the birthplace to the famous Chinese philosopher Confucius. It also houses the tomb of Confucius and as a result, plans to build a train station in the small town were scrapped on the basis that trains would disturb his tomb. Let me start with a bit of an introduction to Confucianism. Whilst Confucianism is not really a religion and more a philosophy, he is described and held in a similar kind of regard to the more religious figures. His philosophy in a nut shell describes the role of individuals within a larger group and guidelines on [View Full Entry]

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Our next destination was a good old fashioned, traditional holiday destination. We were headed for the coastal town of Qingdao, which is famed for three things; it plays host to a number of China’s best beaches (for those of you who love watching sailing on TV{who doesn’t?} the Olympic sailing is taking place here), it was formerly inhabited by German’s and finally and most importantly, it is home to Tsingtao, the largest brewery in China. We arrived at the nearby train station and realised that due to China’s strange train ticketing policies (you can’t get a r [View Full Entry]

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