The day began with a weird moment when we arrived at 4am in Chengdu and nobody moved from their beds. We asked if we had arrived and were told we had, but, from what we could fathom the bus terminal does not open for a couple of hours and so people were not being kicked off the bus and were able to finish their nights sleep before they were actually dropped at the terminal. We got off however, had fun trying to find the way out and then took a taxi to the Mix Hostel. First impressions are that this [View Full Entry]

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The morning started with no one manning the front desk of the hotel, so we were not able to get the deposit back for the key. Not the start we wanted. Our taxi ride then took us to the Hydrofoil port, which was nowhere near the water. This did not bode well, and we were ushered onto a bus and driven an hour up the river, driving past the dam, the very dam we were assured we would go through by our guidebook (the repeatedly poor Rough Guide) and by the ticket office. Finding a seat on the hydrofoil, we [View Full Entry]

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The morning was taken up with trying to find out if A) a hydrofoil travelled from Yi Chang to Chongqing B) if it went through the 3 Gorges Dam C) where it left from. These questions may appear simple but we had a tough time of it with our limited Mandarin (an incorrectly pronounced ‘thank you’ and that’s it). In the end we bought some tickets still unsure what they entitled us to, but when we pointed to a hydrofoil picture they smiled and said yes which was encouraging. In the afternoon we visited the 3 Gorges Dam. This is [View Full Entry]

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Today started apprehensively as we were preparing ourselves for 14 hours standing on a crowded train. Once we had pushed our way with the rest of China on to the train we stood in the middle of the aisle, as more and more people got on and set themselves for the journey in the same carriage. It would have made the Mayor of London proud the number of people you can fit in one carriage. 2 hours in and we had already experienced babies feeding and crying, Chinese people on their phone “HELLO, YES I AM ON THE TRAIN” - [View Full Entry]

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We both remember watching an episode of Blue Peter many years ago that featured the Terracotta Army, the buried life-size clay soldiers guarding an ancient Chinese tomb. It’s always seemed to be one of those amazing things the world has to offer to eager tourists and to say we were looking forward to visiting them ourselves would be an understatement. As usual we opted to be clever by making our own way there and avoiding the tour buses, but it turned out to be a bit more complicated than we’d anticipated. Luckily we had Lucas, a Chinese student of British [View Full Entry]

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After a quick visit to Gren’s workplace when in Korea, we waved goodbye to Gemma’s parents as we begin the final leg of our trip - the next time we see anyone we know will be when we get back to London in 2 months time. We managed to get our flight time correct this time and enjoyed a hassle-free airport. At check-in they even tell you how many minutes security check will take (3 minutes they told us and they were right). We flew to the Chinese city of Xi’an, which is near to where the Terracotta Army was unearthed. [View Full Entry]

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With a bit of trepidation and a lot of excitement in anticipation, we met up with Master Ryan (his Anglicised name) for our 3 hour taekwondo lesson. Without much experience of martial arts, or none to be precise, we didn’t really know what to make of it when we were kitted out in our rather fetching outfits and began with some stretching. This progressed to jumping, and some rather poor attempts at following our master. Then some blocking (14 different techniques quickly mastered) followed by loads of kicking, where Ed realised just how un-supple he is. He taught us a bit [View Full Entry]

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Today was a day of seeing Seoul: Gemma went shopping along the streets of Insadong in the morning and explored further with her parents in the afternoon; Ed went to see the brand new and absolutely massive National History Museum for a bit of culture, and was very impressed. In the evening we got lucky with a restaurant table overlooking the river from which to watch the ‘Lighted Boat Parade’ which was a part of Seoul’s week-long festivities. They were duly impressive too, although we couldn’t make out the much-vaunted boat called ‘Titanic’, and hoped it hadn’t been cursed by its [View Full Entry]

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One of the highlights of our year away’s original itinerary was paying a visit to North Korea. Much to our disappointment organising the practicalities of this turned out to be impossible, in the main because we wouldn’t be in the UK to go through the visa formalities. So we decided that rather than try and sneak in we’d better just wait and go another time, but for a bit of a look we travelled today up to the so-called DMZ (demilitarised zone) between North and South Korea. And what a great experience it was. There’s almost no end to what [View Full Entry]

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At breakfast we met an Aussie who is the Korean Olympic sailing coach and who was running a final selection event which we'd watched a bit of yesterday. Then we went down to the port to catch a boat on a tour of a couple of the islands. The weather was perfect and like we said the scenery is beautiful, so we had a great time. We thought we were on a normal tourist boat but before we knew it we were being interviewed by Korean television who were doing a feature on the islands. Although we were standing outside we [View Full Entry]

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