deb ang

Our first full day in Tokyo was spent lazing around and doing laundry, getting over the last week of early mornings, train rides and sightseeing. As we didn’t hear from Debbie’s Japanese friend on where to meet up :( we headed over toThe National Museum of Emerging Science with Chris and Ross from our hostel where we (mainly Angelo) marvelled at the technology of the future. We took a stroll around the area and somehow ended up eating free cookies from a glue company live on the internet! In the evening the four of us went out for drinks in the Asakusabashi area - where there’s not much going on – and found an outside stand up bar and got chatting to some locals and sharing some Japanese sake. We went in search of a bar ... read more

We decided to take another day trip, and as Nara was only a 30 minute subway ride away thought we would go see what all the fuss was about. We walked along the main street to Nara-kōen, the park where most of the sights are located and first stopped off to see the five story pagoda. All around us were the towns no1 attraction – deer . There are hundreds of wild deer wondering around the town hanging out at the major attractions waiting for tourists to purchase ‘deer cookies’. We of course bought some cookies for the deer and were immediately surrounded…. We walked on to Tōdai-ji temple which houses a giant Buddha. As we were walking back out one of the deer snatched an unsuspecting Angelo’s tourist map from his hand and started to ... read more

We landed in Tokyo and made our way to our hostel with the help of some friendly locals and checked in to a dorm for the night. We spent the morning lazing around and sorting our bags out before taking a Shinkansen (bullet train) down to Kyoto – 2.45 hours!! We had booked ourselves into a traditional Japanese Ryokan for the night with sliding paper shutters, and roll-out mattresses for beds. We enjoyed an open air bath before bed! In the morning we went across the road for our pre-booked breakfast, Angelo had traditional Japanese (salmon, rice and miso soup) while Debbie was less adventurous with sausage and egg. We spent the morning being dressed up in traditional Japanese outfits and then took part in a traditional tea ceremony. We checked in to our much less ... read more

We were relieved when our train pulled in to Xi’an station around 11.30am and followed the crowd out to the exit where we found a guy from Xiangzimen hostel we had booked waiting for us. Our first thoughts of the hostel were ‘very nice’, in an old traditional building and decorated in traditional Chinese style. On further inspection we found it not to be as nice as we had thought. The bathroom was dirty, bed hard, and when Debbie pulled out a black curly hair from her overpriced spag bol at the restaurant right in front of the waitress she did nothing except take the hair and throw it on the floor. Not so nice after all. We did some laundry and enquired about tours and train tickets. We booked train tickets but not a tour ... read more

We stepped off the plane into a grey and rainy Hong Kong. We took a bus (which had wifi – AMAZING) into the city and found some rather expensive and truly horrid accommodation in Chung King Mansions. £15 a night for a tiled cupboard that feels like a toilet is apparently good value in HK. Once we had gotten over the shock of how much it was going to cost us to get our china visas we handed over our passports to a little Indian man who told us we could pick them up at 2pm tomorrow. We slept for the rest of the night. In the morning we first went for breakfast – HK’s version of sausage and egg – then explored the area around Chung King Mansions and happened to see the Big Bus ... read more