First of all sorry for taking so long to write another one of these, have been pretty busy though..

Think that when I last wrote we were just about to return to Shanghai from Huangshan? Well that seems a world away from where we are now in vibrant Buenos Aires. And it did take a while to get here.

Anyway back to Shanghai, I'll try and fill you in a bit, it wasn't our favourite Chinese city by quite a long way, it didn't seem to have anything like the history or culture of Beijing. It was much more Western in places with the huge skyscrapery district of Pudong and the posh shopping bits which we tended to avoid. The Bund is really nice and we did go up the World Financial Centre (SWFC - confusing for the football fan in me) which has the highest observation deck in the world and so we had incredible views from the top of there. Basically we enjoyed Shanghai but didn't feel we had to be quite so hectic as in Beijing as there wasn't as much to see or do.

And when we compare it to our next port of call it didn't really kong close... (apologies - you know what I'm like)

Hong Kong - the unique former British colony stuck on the end of China which strangely appealed to both of us and we couldn't quite work out why. It's fun in it's differentness I suppose, with Englishy signs and shops and people around and therefore a bit easier than China in that respect. The transport system is incredible, almost futuristic, with great direct links from the airport to the city (the flight went ok thankfully despite budget chinese airline) and good metro system - will compare metros later as feel we've become experts on them. We were staying in a dodgey hostel which was possibly illegal but we had a private room with a shower so that was all we needed really, oh yeah HK hostels are all in tower blocks which is different again.

Now we only had a couple of days so had to be quite productive. We went up the Peak Tram which is crazy in it's steepness and goes up to Victoria Peak which gives a good view of the city. Yeah it's touristy but hey it was nice, we waited for sunset and the lights of the city!

We also headed over to Kowloon on the ridiculously cheap Star Ferry and spent a day, in the boiling hot sun, wondering around the museums and water front and eating ice cream. HK was hot, and the humidity had really jumped up from what we'd had before, so much so that some washing that we did failed to dry in 24 hours!

I'm really keen to go back to Hong Kong, just to really experience the whole area, somehow I didn't really imagine to have such cool landscape, lots of nice islands and rolling green hills and forests. The city itself is proper skyscrapers, Shanghai's were tall but somehow more spread out, HK's are close together and somewhat stifling but there's well kept (classic China) green spaces in between and cool walkways raised off the ground linking what seems like the whole centre.

Anyway enough of Hong Kong, we weren't really there for long enough to warrant writing that much about it.

We were then on the move again to Sydney. Now I've been on lots of flights but this one was up there with the best, Richard Branson is actually doing something right, only conplaint was slight lack of legroom. The film selection was unbelievable and for some reason this really excited both of us and meant we didn't really sleep for the 9 hour flight! Hence very tired on arrival in Oz, yay proper(ish) English speaking, and needed that day to recover.

Now Australia is expensive at the moment and we were prepared to be really really cheap but weren't quite prepared for the hostel we'd booked into - it was pretty skank really and like a student house but hey we survived the 4 days just about!

Despite not spending much money we really enjoyed Sydney, the Harbour, Opera House and Bridge are all cool and we spent a good few hours just chilling in the Botanical Gardens with a picnic - it felt like a bit of a hiatus from proper travelling cos it was all so relaxed and easy. We were recommended the Free Walking Tour and it was really good (may do one in BA now as well) and meant we got a bit of culture and history. So yeah worth a stop over probably as it was the best way to get to where we are now...

Can't believe we've done like the first third already, it kind of feels like more as it was the bit we had to plan more with visas and stuff and it was well worth it. Think one of the best bits about this whole trip is going to be the diversity of culture, language, weather that we're going to experience and have already expereienced! Moscow feels so far away. Everywhere we've been we've had a really positive experience and have done lots of great stuff already, long may it continue.

Looking forward to settling in to our 4 weeks in Buenos Aires now, longest period we're spending anywhere so will be good! Love to all and hope I haven't bored you too much x