Today was our last day of sightseeing in China (tomorrow is our last day, but it will only be packing and airport transit). Today was one my personal highlights of this trip (along with the Great Wall, Riding the Xi’an city walls, Terracotta army) as we visit the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The mountain has several peaks (from memory, somewhere in the 30’s) the highest just under 5,600m. The mountain has been climbed (successfully) once in 1987, the Chinese government allowed a Japanese expedition a few years ago, but many of them died on the mountain. Since then, it is forbi [View Full Entry]

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Today we took a 2 hour or so bus ride from Lijiang to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. The history of Tiger Leaping Gorge is that a tiger leaped the gorge (I know, hence the name duh!) while escaping hunters. The gorge itself is one of the deepest in the world, with one side of the gorge is the Jade Dragon Snow mountain. The area is very popular for hiking/trekking, our tour took the easier option to take a well paved flat path from a carpark to the gorge and Tiger Leaping Ston (about 1k walk). There were some rickshaws that you [View Full Entry]

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After breakfast in Kunming we left for Lijiang. Of all the flights in China so far, I haven’t managed score a window seat to view the passing scenery from the plane window. The flight from Kunming to Lijiang is the window seat that I was hoping for, but alas I was unsuccessful. However my sister got a window, and wasn’t interested in relinquish it to me, ohh well too bad, maybe next time (I was of course annoyed as she slept for half of the 40 minute flight!!). Today is our first day in Lijiang city, situated in the north west [View Full Entry]

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This was our only full day in Kunming as we fly in yesterday afternoon and fly out early tomorrow morning for Lijiang. On today’s itinerary is approximately 2 hour bus ride to the famous Stone Forest. The Stone Forest is limestone pillars that can be as high as 30m and resembles a petrified forest. The area that is open to the tourist is quite large and our guide told us that it can take up to 3 days to explore the whole area. We had two options presented to us, jump on a golf cart and travel around the surrounding road [View Full Entry]

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Our last day in Guilin was a later start then normal before we did our last tourist stop in this city, the Reed Flute Caves. It is my sister’s birthday today, at some stage our group sang Happy Birthday on the bus, she was a little bit embarrassed. The caves are one of the major attractions in the city of Guilin and are located fairly close to the city itself. The local people have used the caves for centuries including during World War II when the locals hide in the caves when the Japanese invaded the city. There are some very [View Full Entry]

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Most of this day was doing yet another river cruise along the Li River viewing the karst hills around the area. Unfortunately we had a bit of a misty day so it wasn’t exactly great photography weather. The cruise lasted around 6 hours due to the low water levels. Some people got bored with the hills and scenery after an hour, so they stayed in the cabin and played cards or slept for most of the next few hours, this included many of the VIPs that had the room on the top deck. While most of us just stayed up top [View Full Entry]

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Our 15th day in the far east was also our last morning on the Sunshine China cruise ship before it docks in the early morning in Chongqing (the sister city of my hometown Brisbane). We only had a half day in Chongqing before heading off to Guilin after lunch. We docked in this huge city with a population over 30million (well the municipality of Chongqing) around 8 am. Of course we get the standard merchants when you get off any form of transport trying to sell some sort of kite, map, scarf, jade etc. We headed off to the Chongqing Zoo [View Full Entry]

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This blog covers 11th October to 14th October, which is the dates that we did a river cruise along the Yangtze River, the biggest river in China and the third biggest in the world. We didn’t have the Internet while on the ship, hence the reason I am so far behind in this blog. 11th October Not much happened today, it was a day dedicated to transit. We flew from Xi’an in the morning to Wuhan before taking a 4.5 hour bus ride to Yichang where the cruise started. We had dinner in Yichang, so by the time we got on [View Full Entry]

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Today was a bit of a drive out to the area where the Terracotta Warriors were discovered back in 1974. On the way we stopped off to one of many Terracotta Warrior factories located in the area where you can buy replicas of the actual warriors from 15cm to the actual size of 2m tall. They also showed how the warriors would have been made which was interesting. We arrived at the Terracotta Warriors Museum around 11am, the place is massive with 3 pits opened to the public a museum with various brass and other items. I won’t bore you with [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Xi’an after our overnight train ride around 8am (I think - can’t really remember the time). Not many people managed to get a good not sleep, except perhaps our guide John (who we shared a cabin with) who we shared two bottles of wine and a bottle of beer each (a bottle of beer is 500ml!). Everybody was craving a shower since our previous day in the Hutong area of Beijing, everybody was still feeling a bit dusty - there is no shower on the train and since we checked out of hotels before our tour of Hutong [View Full Entry]

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