After arriving at Narita airport we hopped onto one of the very efficient trains into central Tokyo and arrived at one of the most confusing and incomprehensible train stations we've ever been too! It was very busy! Apparently 3 million people pass through here every day and it has about the same amount of exits and metro lines passing through it! After several wrong turns and a few pointers from some rather lovely Japanese people when we looked too helpless we h...

Partly due to the fact that we were booking it so late at night and partly due to the fact that Shanghai is loads more expensive than anywhere else we've been, we blew the budget here! We booked ourselves into a dead posh old hotel near The Bund. After rejuvenating ourselves with a little afternoon nap we met Katharine (Clarke - yes, bizarre we know! The fact we met in Shanghai we mean, not Katharine herself!) and a friend of her's and Lianne's, the rather quick...

We had a fairly eventful start to our journey from Xi'an. It was raining . . . it appeared to be taxi-driver shift change time and no one would take us to the train station - cue a bit of stress! Graham spent an inordinately long amount of time trying to explain to a taxi driver what a **** he was . . . Graham swore, Gemma swore at Graham for swearing. It didn't help! A very friendly Chinese guy came to our rescue and persuaded a taxi driver that he did want ...

We took the overnight sleeper from Chengdu on the 23rd - though we cheated and went softsleeper! We shared our cabin with two Chinese guys who spoke absolutely no english and showed absolutely no interest in us so we thought we were in for a peaceful journey . . . until they came back from their dinner rather the worse for wear and wanted to be our best mates! They were determined that we were going to have a conversation! So with the aid of the guidebook we asce...

We flew to Chengdu on the 20th with Air China and survived our (statistically) most dangerous journey yet! We discovered that other than panda's and A LOT of banks (!) Chengdu doesn't have a great deal to offer the sightseeing tourist! (We went to a couple of temples too!). We were lucky that we had a brilliant hostel with couches, good food and cheap beer and that kept us more than entertained for a few days and meant we still had a pleasant time! Graham has d...