On board a rickety, grubby old bus from the Three Gorges Dam to the down river city of Wuhan, we have just spent the last four days enjoying the scenic Yangzi River from a Chinese domestic tourist boat. Out of the 400+ passengers, only 5 were of Anglo-Saxon appearance, and due to our apparent poor Chinese skills, we were buddied up with a French couple in a tiny four-bed dorm. With the help of some strong rice wine and a few games of mahjong, we were soon speakin...

The warnings we had heard about the Chinese trains turned out to a be fallacy. Having previously travelled on sleeper trains across eastern Europe, the chinese carriage was relatively spacious and quite comfortable, at least on the bottom beds. Consequently, we arrived in Chongqing more rested than anticipated. Arriving in a city where literally no one around us seemed to speak any English, and not having written down the hostel name or address in Chinese, we st...

Xi'an, probably the most visited city in China after Beijing and Shanghai, turned out to be well worth the flight from Beijing. Flying was not really consistent with our budget ambitions, but with no other choice but to spend our whole visa-allocated month in Beijing, we eventually caved in. The hour and a half flight with East China Air was comfy, relatively cheap and we were well fed, but best of all we avoided a grueling 14 hour train trip. On the bus from th...

And our adventure has started! First stop - Beijing! In Beijing for nearly two weeks now.. We were planning on heading somewhere a bit more rural, but with the Chinese new year approaching every chinaman and his dog are desperately trying to get out of the city for some quality family time. We've found that trying to get a train ticket this time of year in china is like 'climbing tree to catch fish' - a waste of time. Not to worry though, there is heaps to see i...