O my God what a great time I am having!!!! Good company, food and sights in a truly colourful and lovely country. The Kung Fu Show was excellent - very dramatic and theatrical with vibrant colours, loud music, unusual dancing and some great martial arts stuff involving knives and breaking steel rods on their heads! Jason I was thinking of youu the whole time - you would have loved it! he 'actors' were genuine Shaolin Monks - got to meet them afterwards and ...

Woo Hoo here I am in Beijing! Arrived at 7.20am this morning from another overnight train from Xian. Have already visited the Forbidden City - home to the Ming and Qing Dynasties during the 15th Century - and Tiananmen Square - the world's largest public square which can hold half a million people (and it felt like there were that many there too!!). Just had a lovely feast on Peking Roast Duck (very yummy) and am heading to a Kung Fu Show tonight. The P...

So today we managed to find the quickest way to get heat exhaustion and indegestion! Basically we went to Leshan - got there via several buses as the first one crashed into a taxi at a junction (well thats what happens when you don't have indicators or traffic lights!!) and then we needed to transfer to another before getting on a boat to see the Giant Buddah. Clearly it is peak season so every single yellow-and-red-visor-wearing Japanese tour company was a...

Finally back on dry land after 3 days and 3 nights on the Yangzi River. It was a good job we filled up on good food in Yangshou first as the food on the boat was pretty limited! Needless to say we are all pretty bored with Chinese food (my stomach definately is - don't wish to get that intimately involved with a cabin toilet again!!). The boat trip was great fun - mainly due to the colorful company and great scenery. Chang Jiang (Yangzi River) is China's lo...

So last night we visited a nearby school to help the students with their english. It was great - they are quite amazing, some had only been learning for 3 months and they were practically fluent! The school motto is "Success in English. Success in Life.", basically if they do not learn english they can never work for a European Company which offer better pay, hours, conditions and holidays than the Taiwanese, Korean and Chinese companies. Some of them have had to...