After much deliberation whilst in Chengdu, we decided that it would be cool to do a cruise down the Yangtze River to see the Three Gorges and the Little Three Gorges. There were a number of choices with regards to the cruises but the English one was extortionate and significantly above our tight little budget so in the end we decided on a 4 day Chinese cruise ship which actually turned out to be bags of fun! The boat made a number of stops at various touristy po...

After having a wonderful time in Xi'an, we were full of hope for our next destination, Chengdu and it didn't let us down! We travelled again on the overnight train, but this time it wasn't as grim an experience, as we'd booked top beds and had plenty of room for our luggage! We haven't mentioned so far too much about the Chinese people themselves so I'll try to give you an overview now....... The culture is so different to that of the UK and, I'd expect, most o...

After an extremely grim train journey from Shanghai to Xi'an, we were unsure as to whether we could forgive China enough to be able to enjoy another city! Xi'an completely won us over though! Unlike Shanghai and Beijing, Xi'an, although one of China's largest cities, has retained much more of the older Chinese culture, presenting itself as a eclectic mix of old and new. First of all, we must mention the train journey. It was around 15 hours on what is known as t...

We're back in China! After our amazing experience in Beijing we were looking forward to seeing what another Chinese city had to offer! I should start by saying that the Youth Hostel we stayed at in Shanghai was amazing and strangely enough is overlooked often enough because it's not mentioned in the Lonely Planet books. It was called Shanghai International Youth Hostel (or sometimes the City Central Youth Hostel) and was conveniently located a 2 minute walk from...

We've finally found a spare hour to update our blog, given that it's now a couple of weeks behind, so our profound apologies to those who have been waiting in anticipation for our next instalment! We flew to Tokyo from Beijing on the 1st April and returned to Shanghai on the 9th April, hence we had a very short time to try and see as much of Japan as possible! It was a challenge but I think we managed it! We started out with a night in Tokyo, heading out to see...