Most of us will never have the opportunity to see a panda in real life. One of the world’s most endangered animals, there are very few of these animals kept in captivity around the world. The entire wild population and bulk of captive pandas live in and around Chengdu, in the Sichuan province of China. It’s the reason why the… Read more →
We’re big fans of visiting religious monuments around the world – out of interest and curiosity for the building or monument, an appreciation of the incredible work in building it, and out of respect for the beliefs of the locals. We made our way to Nara in Japan to visit their Big Buddha. We also made our way to Lantau… Read more →
The first time we saw images of the “Rainbow Mountains of China” was in one of those Buzzfeed-type posts, titled something along the lines of ‘Places You Never Knew Existed’, featuring photo after photo of other-worldly natural environments and formations around the world. The images of the candy coloured mountains jumped out at us – did a place like this really… Read more →
Cycling the ancient city walls of Xi’an, to the tunes of Lady Gaga, alongside dozens of professional cyclists in a race? Yes, this actually happened. Only in China of course! Xi’an is an incredible city of history – with the majority of its premiere sights and attractions located within it’s ancient city walls. The walls are one of the oldest,… Read more →
These days its hard to get ‘off the beaten track’ in Viet Nam. In the past ten years it has become one of the most popular Asian destinations for tourists from all over the world. This, and its unique geography on a North/South axis (which essentially means most tourists travel in the same direction) have made it ever harder to… Read more →
You can’t even begin to imagine the feeling that a local group of peasants felt, that day in 1974 when they began drilling for a well, just outside of Xi’an. Drilling came to a halt as they uncovered an underground vault, containing shattered pieces of terracotta. As they explored further and deeper, the vault and the areas surrounding the site… Read more →
“We literally just want to walk through this gate and then we are there. I can see it from here! Why can’t we just walk through? Where are we meant to go? We just begged that guy at that gate to let us through to here… now we have to sneak back in? Or buy a ticket again? Where is… Read more →
There’s an image that’s been floating around on the internet – an image that evokes both fear and dread into any traveller… It’s this one. Thousands upon thousands of Chinese locals and tourists, descending on the Great Wall of China. Overcrowded tourist sights are the nightmare of any traveller. We all have our tips and tricks for trying to avoid… Read more →
If we were going to be totally honest with you, we didn’t know a LOT about China when we started planning our trip. It’s the most populated country in the world, with 1.35 billion people living here. There’s pandas. Sights like the Great Wall and Terracotta Warriors. There’s a lot of wealth. Practically everything is made here… So, as you… Read more →
I sit here writing this blog, still recovering from the whirlwind eleventh month we’ve had on the road. It’s a month that has certainly taken it’s toll on us physically, but what an incredible time we had in China! We’ve been fairly quiet and only posted intermittently whilst in China – partly because of the lack of signal and not… Read more →
