After four months on the road we were looking forward to a few days of recharging our batteries on the idyllic Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc. We took the Superdong II ferry from Rach Gia to the island. We stayed in a bamboo hut just metres from the beach. Unfortunately our paradise island break turned [...]
We had initially planned to spend one month in China. Sometime in our second week we realised that this was going to be nowhere near long enough to make the most of such a huge country. We eventually got a visa extension which allowed us an extra thirty days. Our China trip started in Beijing [...]
Our last stop in China Nanning. We hadn’t originally planned to visit Nanning as we were hoping to cross into Vietnam from Kumning (via Hekou). However recent torrential storms with subsequent flooding in the Lao Cai province of Vietnam meant this was not going to be possible. We were instead to cross from Nanning by [...]
The journey from Kaili to Kunming was probably our worst train journey so far on our trip. Up until this point we had been travelling using ‘soft sleeper’ class. This means you get 4 people sharing a relatively comfortable compartment with a door that closes to block out the noises from the rest of the [...]
Armed with our thirty day visa extension we decided to take the opportunity to venture off the tourist trail. Our trusted Rough Guide had all of two pages on travelling in the mountainous areas between Guanxi and Guizhou provinces. We had seen so much of urban China by this stage that we decided to give [...]
Yangshou is a beautiful place. It has the spectacular karst scenery we had seen in Guilin but none of the unpleasantness which we had experienced there. We ended up staying in Yangshuo for a week (partly due to the fact that we were waiting for our visa extensions to be processed). The first three nights [...]
Guillin was a real disappointment, especially after Chengdu. It does have some spectacular karst scenery with the mountains seemingly appearing between buildings in the middle of the city. However, the surroundings did not make up for the fact that pretty much everyone in Guillin is tourist savvy and trying, at every opportunity, to rip you [...]
Chengdu doesn’t appear to be a place which is frequented by many foreign tourists. I suspect we went there because Matthew had seen an Anthony Bourdain programme raving about the spicy food. He denies this. Whatever the reason I am definitely happy we went. I think it was, overall, probably my favourite of the cities [...]
The main motivation for visiting the city of Xi’an was to see the Terracotta Army. I have to say I was rather impressed with the pits containing the chariots, soldiers and horses at various stages of excavation. Matthew, on the other hand, was left feeling quite underwhelmed by the whole experience.
Shanghai is an amazing city. In general we definitely preferred it to Beijing. We spent five days here seeing the sights and taking in the big city atmosphere. We particularly enjoyed the panoramic view of The Bund and beyond from the 80th floor of the Jin Mao Tower and the boat trip down the Huangpu [...]
