Phoenix Holiday Hotel Ezhou

... to me as I walked today. I think China, as much as anywhere else, needs to focus on Quality, not Quantity. And then I thought, where has the Zen gone? Didn't it come from China? Why can't I see the Zen entry on Wikipedia from China? Or am I filtering China through Pirsig's American Zen? Phaedrus, help me. After 29 hours in 3 taxis, 3 buses, 1 all night train, and a ferry going from Tai'An to Jinan to Shanghai to ...

... driver seemed to recognise so we ended up walking along a motorway until the Danish girls got ****** off. We eventually found it down a dark alley - so if anyone is looking for the IYHA hostel in Wuhan, it's pretty hard to find so go in daylight. Booked our train out to Guilin - too late to get a sleeper so ended up with a 'hard' seat for the 14 hour journey...mm, this is a first.

... sleep in today since the rest of the lads are usually up at 7 or 8 every morning, then the fn began! We got into nicola and marks room and mark had roseannes hat on next thing on the t.v screen behind him a video appeared showing him taking off the hat to show a bald head next thing he did it in real life and it was the scriest thing ever!We shaved off the remander or his hair then shaved Hans head then we proceeded to ...

To fully get across stuff in this latest tome I probably have to aquaint you better with the rest of my travelling companions. As you might recall I wasn't that enamoured with them on first encounter which just goes to show what a judgemental git I can be, cos as time has gone on familiarity has certainly not bred contempt. On the whole, though we may be a large group we are a happy little band of wanderers. Firstly you have Richard and Stu. Richard, (sometimes goes by ...

... who did speak great English, probably better than me in fact. We passed a good deal of the 19 hour journey talking, she was on her way to Shanghai for a job interview and was also the same age as me so was a fellow rooster (got a full explanation of the Chinese calendar) but on further questioning she was actually born just one day after me but on remembering the time difference we worked it out to be less than 12 hours - I was still older though :-)

... I'm not going to write much here for the internet connection I have is very expensive ($1 per five minutes) but highly reliable. I'd prefer to share my photos. We spent the day visiting 2 villages, an ink factory and Hagnshuan... a very friendly place... before boarding our overnight train to Shanghai. Departed at 10:30pm and arrived in amazing Shanghai 11 hours later. More about Shanghai later.

... oily food we've been having. I'm glad that we experienced such dramtic shifts in the weather because the morning provided us with a very different experience to that of the afternoon. In the morning, it was very eery walking through the clouds whilst navigating the very tidy but hard paths of the mountain. In the afternoon, we were rewarded with splendid views of the mountain's slopes. Amazing Race RTW was filmed here... I can recall the contestants opening a whole lot of ...

... After everything, our new guides moved the bags between buses. Maybe the culture shock is affecting him more than I... but I'm surprised for he has been to this country 4 times. Talk about a difficult man. I've developed a higher level of appreciation for our leader, Ciao, for he really took the time to talk to me about the issues I was facing with the Chinese culture and the difficulties I've been having as of late. It was refreshing for him to open up to me ...

... that important (see our descriptions of toilets in our Dali blog). We went on one of these tours and whilst the tour itself around some temples wasn't that interesting, it was an experience being part of a mass of Chinese tourists pushing past each other to get off the boat first and following the tour guide with a yellow flag everywhere. There's no English translations and we were starting to appreciate how lucky we were with our foreigner-oriented ...

... The next morning we had pre-planned breakfast, avoiding the buffet by this time enjoying some stale thickly sliced bread. Dear oh dear, breakfast is not a winner here in Huang Shan. We caught some transport for the short ride to Wild Monkey Mountain. After a quick walk we found a group of Chinese tourists, taunting and laughing at a group of (as the name suggested) wild monkeys, who were growling, rearing up and threatening to attack them. The Chinese seemed to enjoy it, much to our ...