So we survived the time travelling flight that took us from Osaka to Vancouver (via Shanghai). We landed in Vancouver an hour before we left Osaka which was really very strange and proceeded to do Wednesday all over again. The hostel we're in is awesome, really great people here and good cheap food. We're going to explore Stanley Park today, braving the rain. The rest of our time in Japan was brilliant, we did karaoke in Tokyo with a bunch of people from the ho...

We have just arrived in Kyoto, where we are staying for four nights, before heading off to Tokyo. Since our last blog we've done quite a lot. We flew into Osaka and spent one night there, sleeping on traditional beds, which were suprisingly comfortable. Then we went to Kobe. We didn't see that much of Kobe itself, but we did use it as a base to see Himeji, which has an amazing castle and samurai quaters!! After Kobe, we stayed in Hiroshima, which is beautiful. Th...

Greetings from Shanghai! Sorry its been so long since our last post, but we managed to pack a lot into our time in Beijing which left too little time for adequate blogging. : ) To recap our time briefly - we saw the sunrise at Tiananmen Square (the flag raising ceremony was epic, the sun was very smog obscured), sampled food at the street market but avoided scorpian like the plague (it was still wriggling), braved the Silk Market to earn some bargains (the ha...

Greetings from China! We have finally arrived in Beijing, rocked up at 7.30am off the best train ever (it provided flip flops!) and after dumplings for breakfast jumped on a bus off to the Forbidden City. First we went to Jingshan Park which had amazing views across the Forbidden City from its highest pavillion. Then we headed down, dodging people trying to flog us rickshaw rides, and entered the Forbidden City. It was absolutely stunning, we now wish to live t...

Hello! Back from the gers which were so much fun. We rode camels! We also visited with a Mongolian family, where I tried and Jacqui cleverly avoided fermented mare's milk(not great), traditional salted milk tea (surprisingly tasty) and played Mongolian drinking games. The ger camps are situated in the middle of nowhere practically so you leave the tent and see mountains surrounding the plains surrounding the camp. Absolutley stunning. Back on the train to...