So we are over one month into our adventure, and 9 days into our oriental leg, and we are onboard our 2nd Chinese sleeper train for our fleeting visit to Hong Kong.

We have mastered the art of buying train tickets, so we now own the bottom two bunks, and some other unlucky soul can occupy the bunk in the sky. So high you can lick the roof, as Claire can vouch for on our last trip from Beijing to Xian!

So here are the highlights of China so far.....

Beijing
Beijing was quite the city, and we were quite surprised at how westernised it was, and it was similar to being in any other big city. Due to a programming error we only ended up having one night there do headed off to the Olympic site to see probably one of my favourite stadiums.

The stadium was awesome, although quite sad to see how underused it was. Claire commented how it seemed like China is in a rush to build things and then forget about them. However after thinking about it this could be said for every Olympic site.

The Olympic site was also our first real encounter with hawkers, with hundreds of people offering to take our photos, or sell us kites. We think that if the hawkers used a bit of imagination, and create their own USPs they might sell a bit more!

We decided to hang around until it got dark, and I would recommend to anyone else visiting to do the same as the Aquatics cube was a truly mesmerising site! Now it is a water park, but having left our swimwear at the hostel we had to give this a miss.

After a McDonalds (don't judge us, it was the only place on the site!) We wandered back to the centre in search of the night market, which we failed to find, grabbed a Pineapple beer and headed back to the hostel.

The hostel had a little cafe so before heading out I plumped for an American breakfast (they must've ran out of mushrooms as it came with one onion ring and one spring roll) and we headed to The Forbidden Palace and T Square. En route we encountered our first scam attempt (come see my art!), I can't understand how people can fall for this. The palace and the square were pretty epic, but being in a rush we didn't have chance to fully explore the museums. Seeing the army marching was good to see though, we do have pictures but have yet to find a USB port that works.

Later that afternoon we caught the train to Badaling for the Great Wall and experienced probably one of the best nights of hospitality ever at The Courtyard Hostel.

Being the only people staying we were invited by the owner to join his family for dinner, which consisted of 10 different dishes, Chinese 'wine', and as much free beer as we could drink! We also learnt that the word 'Gambi' means 'neck it' and with the Chinese wine being 36% proof this was no easy task. The beer on the other hand went down much easier, and the combination of beef, pigs feet, and what we thought might be worms (it was tofu) was perfect.

The meal led to Karaoke, as many free cigarettes I could smoke, and a few bruises after Claire had a trip playing with Mao Mao the dog!

Climbing the wall the next day with motion sickness, a hangover, and a bruised face was not the easiest task, but it was well worth it, and chose the non cable car side and at times we were the only people on our section of the wall. It really is a wonder of the world in every sense.

Overnight Train to Xian
We finally found our way to Beijing West (signposts and directions do not exist in China) via taxi (our first time of not making our own way somewhere!). Getting on the train was easy enough, although why the Chinese insist running for a reserved only train makes no sense to me.

Claire was top bunk, which was so high it is ridiculous and I took bottom bunk opposite arguing Chinese couple. The train had the healthiest Snack cart in the world (fruit and more fruit) and hot water for our noodles, and surprisingly the train was fairly quiet, and I didn't hear anyone spitting, which was a first....

Places we have seen people spit....
In the museum of Terracotta Warriors
In the Birds Nest
On the bus (several times, the driver too)
In the Reed Flute Caves
On pretty much every single food stall

X'ian
We were met off the train by the driver from our hostel, which helped us escape the hotel touts and were dropped off inside the city walls. I was surprised by just how big the walls were, and how smoggy it was, but the hostel was lovely, and despite being told our room was not available, and that they only had us booked in for one night, for £2 extra we were given a private room with en suite.

The first day in Xian involved an adventure round the Muslim Quarter, which was food heaven, a trip to the supermarket that contained live frogs and turtles primed for eating, and a pint of beer for 25 rmb, which was a rip off considering a litre of beer cost 5rmb at the last hostel. The bonus is that 20 cigs cost 60p.

After a couple of nights at the South Gate we decided to move hostels to the North end, which was set in a courtyard, where we met Scouse Andy and Shanghai Leishou, and headed to the Terracotta Warriors via bus. It took us an hour to find the bus from the station (directions and sign posts please) but we finally made it.

After being told by the guides we needed a guide, and being told we needed to pay to go by golf cart to the museum (we declined the first but paid 50p for the latter) we ventured into what China proclaim the '8th wonder of the world'. We however were underwhelmed by the warriors. Yes it is an amazing find, but it was nowhere near as impressive as it is made out, so after no more than an hour we headed back.

It was interesting talking to Chinese Leishou who explained that she felt let down by Xian, and although we had enjoyed certain aspects of it we tended to agree with her, and despite our efforts to find the bus we were glad we paid a total of 100 rmb each rather than the organised tour for 260 rmb!

It was however useful going out for tea with a Chinese speaker, who took us to a tiny hole in the wall where we were treated to 4 courses for £1 a head! We have promised to send her some English tea when we get back for her collection.

Guilin
After our short and bumpy ride to Guilin we met American Cliff and his girlfriend Amy who shared our taxi to How Hostel. It turns out Cliff lives in San Fran so hopefully we will see him again in July.

How Hostel seemed amazing. Not only did we get a free beer on arrival, we paid £3 a night for a huge double room with en suite, and for the first time we met useful hostel staff, who were friendly, spoke English, and didn't follow us around at every move.

We wandered to the night market, got noodles and beer, and hit the hay.

Guilin was so different to other Chinese cities. It was clean, friendly and seemed to have some order to it! The first day we headed to Seven Star Park where we saw more wild monkeys, and our first Giant Pandas! We also saw 2 bears fighting and less exciting was 2 caged lions, but I suppose when human rights aren't upto much, animal rights are a life time away.

The 2nd day involved our first organised tour, that consisted of a bamboo raft down the li river. However the raft was not bamboo, more plastic pipes, and the trip to the pier was done by bus as apparently a quarrel with local farmers meant that we could not park the boat. The scenery and the rock formations were worth every penny though.

The final outing in Guilin was a trip to Reed Flute Cave, and being us we decided to walk there rather than bus it. A supposed one hour walk took 3 but we made it! The cave was amazing, light shows and glows over all the rocks, and we both agree that the cave was more deserving of the claim to be the 8th wonder than the warriors.

So now we are off to Shenzhen to cross the border into Hong Kong where we have already located all you can eat Cantonese and a Les Mills class at Fitness First, that is if we manage to survive man who chews with his mouth open, family who can't keep their voices down, and girl who walks up and down playing music on her phone!