Mike Day 1: We arrived in Vietnam at 7:30pm local time after a small delay of about 1 hour. After going through the usual hassle of entering a country we found a taxi we could afford and took it to our hostel in the old quarter of Hanoi. The journey was suprisingly nice. Hanoi looked like it was a bustling and slightly run down city (as viewed from the outskirts at night) the houses were really thin but many stories tall and all in sort of a colonial style, it g...

Alicia: Day 32: We arrived in Shenzhen, just on the border with Hong Kong, around 7am and headed to the border-crossing. Took us about an hour to go through customs, then another hour tube ride finally to our hostel in Causeway Bay. We couldn't check in til 2pm so we treated ourselves to McDonalds breakfasts (cheapest food around at the time) and did some food shopping. Once checked in and after a nap, we headed to Wan Chai Computer Centre to see if we could get...

Alicia: Day 26: We were really excited about going to Guilin as everyone we met only had great things to say about the area which was great. Woke up in the train from Chengdu at 8am and looked out the window to see a beautiful river surrounded by hills and traditional houses and little bamboo rafts and fishing boats. What a view to wake up to :) Once we'd arrived at the train station we made our way to Wada Hostel with no trouble (finally a easily located hoste...

Mike: Day 17: We took the train from Shanghai to the old water town of Suzhou. The train was only a couple of hours and when we arrived we decided to try to walk with all our stuff to the hostel. We took the wrong turn almost immediately though and ended up wandering round for half a hour until we gave up and got a taxi. Good job too, we were a long way out. We check into our hostel. The place seemed nice if a little more run down than we are used to. The floors ...

Mike: Day 10: Our attempts to get up early fail as usual. Initially waking up at 8:30, then 9. Finally making it outside just before 11am. Not before changing our room and booking our onward journey to Xi' An the following day (888RMB - about £88 for the both of us). We get some breakfast at our local bakery "Auspicious Phoenix", eating it outside the tube station due to their "no food or drink" policy. We paid 2 Yuan (20p) for a go-anywhere ticket and spent t...