For our final day ‘in Beijing’ we headed off with a van load of other tourists (mostly Colombian for some reason) to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Once we got about an hour out of the city we began to catch glimpses of the wall snaking its way along the tops of the mountains in the distance. At first it looks like a road or as if your eyes are playing tricks on you, but as you get closer to the mountains there is no mistaking that it is the wall. Mutianyu is slightly further from Beijing than Badaling, the more popular section of the wall, and as a result we pretty much had the place to ourselves when we first arrived. We caught the cable car up to the wall, climbed up some stairs and ... read more

We awoke on the second morning in Beijing feeling slightly worse for wear. The lonely planet had mentioned a few places you could get a foot massage for when the uneven Beijing concrete footpaths take a toll on your body. We both dismissed this comment initially, but we now realised we probably should have found a hotel located right next door to one of them! At least we weren’t the only travellers to have woken up feeling like this! We usually walk a lot overseas, and neither of us had ever ended up with sore legs, knees, ankles and feet like this – ouch. We decided on a nice gentle activity for our day considering we were both in pain… the Summer Palace. The Palace is well connected by the subway, so we set off walking ... read more

After an overnight stop in Kuala Lumpur, during which we caught up with our friends Mira and Khalid for dinner and managed to get about 4hrs sleep, we boarded the plane for Tianjin, near Beijing in China. I got through immigration without any issues, but the guards seemed a little more interested in Scott…possibly because of there is an international arrest warrant out for him but more likely because of the period of time he spent living in Shanghai. After a number of people examined his passport and typed things on the computer he was allowed into China. Tianjin is connected to Beijing by a high speed railway, and somehow we fluked our way through purchasing tickets for the train and then onto the bus to the train station and finally onto our very comfortable train. ... read more

During one of our strenuous days in Ella the idea of an overnight stop in Yala National Park came up. The five of us (Sarah, Roly, Emma, Scott and I) decided to hire a car to drop us in Tissa so that we could do a morning safari the following day before going our separate ways. The drive form Ella to Tissa was, in typical Sri Lankan style, absolutely gorgeous; rolling hills, deep valleys, jungle, waterfalls and rice paddies. On arrival in Tissa we checked into the hotel and began the hard task of bargaining about the price of a 5am - 12pm safari in Yala National Park with the hotel owner. His initial price was about 4500rupees per person; far higher than the price that was suggested in Lonely Planet. Throughout the bargaining process we ... read more

We decided to do the approximately 200km round trip to Sigiriya and Dambulla as a day trip from Kandy…in a tuk-tuk. The three hour drive to Dambulla was actually quite enjoyable, there is a certain charm about driving through the countryside in a tuk tuk, somehow you seem closer to the people in the town and the scenery than you do in a car. As with the drive to Kandy the scenery was absolutely gorgeous, a combination of rice paddies, rolling hills, tea plantations and jungle broken up by busy towns. Dambulla is about 10km’s closer to Kandy than Sigiriya, and is home to the Royal Rock Temples - basically a bunch of Buddhas in caves. The caves are about 150m above the town, which means you have to climb up stairs to reach them (what ... read more