Everybody was Kung Fu fighting! The 7 hour coach from Xi'an dropped us off in Dengfeng, a small village on the outskirts of Shaolin. From there we were met by The Master. Once a monk at the Shaolin monastery, the master trained there until leaving to set up an orphanage and school. We were greeted by the kids and they performed a show of their various Kung Fu skills and the Master also participated using the heavy weapons he trains with. Our group was then take...

Arriving in Xi'an just after midday on Tuesday, we were met by our tour guide Sasha who has lived in Xi'an for 7 years after coming to the city to study and has a wealth of knowledge on the history of Xi'an. The city is sprawling but we were staying in a hostel just inside the ancient city walls where building regulations prohibit high rise buildings and keep a charm to the city. The city walls are square with a perimeter of just over 13 km. The walls are as wi...

I write this from yet another night train at midnight as we depart Chengdu. The day has been a long one as we are all suffering from the effects of a heavy evening drinking 50% rice wine. The head is still a bit fuzzy and I'm pretty tired but will try and keep this as literate as possible. We arrived in Chengdu on Friday afternoon after the night train from Yangshuo. My expectations of the Chengdu were that it would be a small, unassuming place however this was ...

Wow! Yangshuo has been an amazing introduction to China. It's worth googling the name to see how incredible the scenery is. The town is a tourist destination for Chinese nationals so there is a booming industry with loads of activities, landmarks, restaurants and nightlife. The trip to Yangshuo from Hong Kong began by meeting the tour group at 7am in a hostel in Hong Kong the day after the previous blog left off. Jet lag had fully hit by this point and I had bee...

I thought I had escaped the jet lag until this afternoon but have started to hit the wall. It's been a crazy couple of days that have merged into one. I left the Frenchay ranch at 4am on Saturday after a couple of hours sleep to drive to Heathrow for 6am. From there I had a flight to Mumbai (8 hours) and then a connecting flight to Hong Kong (5 hours). I was sat next to a chap called Rich during the first flight who was moving to Singapore for a new job. As the d...