I’m learning Mandarin, I think I’m learning Mandarin, I really hope so… There was a point earlier this year when we three went for a walk, my family often humour me by coming for a walk with me on Sundays, but this one was a frosty affair. Rosa was giving clear non verbal signs that […]
I’m learning Mandarin, I think I’m learning Mandarin, I really think so… Read More »
While friends lay sleeping in the west – Theo’s blog The other night, I was standing on the hotel roof gazing at the moon over Guilin. I thought back in my mind across the land we’d travelled over, visualising what my friends at work in England were doing at that moment. That’s when I realised that, although
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Is it ever black and white? Life is different on a two day sleeper train in China. For a start our compartment companions were a well organised couple who had lots of excellent food in sensible containers and not much luggage. They didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Mandarin (yet!) but we got on
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Five Cats Hotel (a tail from Kazakhstan) – Rosa’s blog Our first impressions of Almaty were definitely positive, but our good mood was very quickly dampened when we got to our hostel. It was not only cheap and uncomfortable looking, but unfriendly, and the man at the desk was asking us to pay triple what
The pointed finger Our beautiful big red bus arrived in Yining at 18.45 but we didn’t know if our train left at 20.21 or 22.21. All Chinese trains run on Beijing time and Yining and Urumqi, the city where we were headed, operate on local time (two hours earlier) so we were in a hurry
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The land of giants – Theo’s blog China exceeds my expectations – even my expectation about how much it would! As soon as we saw the swanky big red bus and the open-faced happily excited Chinese passengers waiting at Almaty bus station, I was confident we’d get over the border and reassured that we’d be
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The big red bus to China The big red bus journey to China was easily the best bus journey we have had. I wasn’t scared by the driving at any point, helped largely by the flat terrain but the bus was also big and demanded a certain amount of respect going around corners. None of
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Okay, is this really happening? When we finally decided on our route to Australia, Kazakhstan was the first jewel. A vast undiscovered land with hidden treasures and camels! I spent a while ‘discovering’ Kazakhstan, usually before work at 4.00 in the morning on days I couldn’t sleep, and eventually I found somewhere for us to
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Riding with the sons of Genghis Khan – Theo’s blog (By the time this post is up, we should be finally heading to the Chinese border!) The prospect for our 2 day train trek across the Steppes of Kazakhstan was not looking so great. I’d been placed in a separate compartment from Shan and Rosa;
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One month in…our top tips 🙂 Tomorrow we head for China and we are not clear what access we will have to the internet so we may not be in touch for a while. We will carry on writing though because it’s great remembering all the tiny details of just how awful travelling can be
One month in – our top tips :) Read More »