We signed up for a tour of the yangzi river with our hostel but we had to go third class on a chinese boat as all the other tours (especially the english ones) were really really expensive. The Chinese government have built a massive dam at one end of the river and are planning to flood the entire area by 2009 to conserve water for the chinese people. The river has been rising for the past 10 years flooding many villages and farms and by 2009, the river will be s...

We enjoyed a few days in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province. We arrived at 5am having arranged a free pick up from the station by our hostel but we couldnt find them anywhere so eventually got a taxi to our hostel. As we had arrived so early, our beds werent ready for us so the guy at the hostel suggested that we went on the the tour that left at 7.30am to see the pandas at the famous panda breeding centre in Chengdu. So despite having had very little s...

Hello from Xi'an! We finally left beijing after a crazy week. It is really difficult to get train tickets at the moment as its peak tourist seasona dn the scholls and uni's in China ahve broken up for thier summer hols, so the world and his wife are tyring to get trains around china! Its mental! The train was nice though and our beds were quite comfy despite being very thin! We were on the train for about 12 hours and it was overnight so slept through mos...

Ni Hao from Beijing! Sorry for the delay in writing, Beijing has been crazy and we have been busy sight seeing and mainly getting drunk! We had a good train ride from Mongolia to China, which was a bit sad as it was our last Trans Mongolian train but we were so excited to be arriving in Beijing. Our train left at 8am so we has a whole day to sit and watch Mongolia and the Gobi desert flash past. We thought it would be really pretty scenery but it turned out t...

Hello from Mongolia! We have had a fun filled few days here in Mongolia, enjoying both the busy city of Ulaan Baator and the quiet scerenity of the Terelj National Park. We got the train from Irkutsk on monday and endured a 9 hour border crossing to get out of Russia and into Mongolia - I swear that half the time we were sat doing nothing! We eventually arrived in Ulaan Baator and were picked up from the station by our hostel. We are staying in the centre o...