China – Country No.2 – Xi’an

Xi'an, pronounced 'See an', is another big city and considered to be the gateway to Western China. Everything heading there goes through Xi'an, roads, rails etc. Though I find it hard to believe as China is such an expansive country. Xi'an boasts the biggest drum in China. The 700 year old city wall still stands …

China – Country No.2 – Chengdu

We arrive at Chengdu and meet FiFi. A lively, energetic tour guide. The trip to the hostel involved the metro and lots of stairs but we coped with our heavy bags, as we are yet to lose our Mongolian warm layers and coats. Chengdu is a big city. Big enough to be served by several …

China – Country No.2 – Yangshuo

Time to meet our tour group, or so we thought. We headed to a hostel in Shanghai that is used by the Dragon Trip tour to meet a guide and our fellow travellers. No one showed up. No tourists, no tour guide. The desk told us to wait in the rooftop bar. Still no one …

China – Country No.2 – Disneyland.

Shanghai Disneyland boasts the largest Disney Fairytale Castle of them all, it's also the most interactive, if you speak Mandarin. This is my 4th Disneyland. I started at Anaheim, some 25 years ago, and have since been to Disneyland Paris and Tokyo. Shanghai is nowhere near as big as Orlando, it's just one park, but …

China – Country No2 – Shanghai

So, onward from Mongolia and into China. The great firewall is no joke, it's very real and makes the internet a tricky place to navigate. Nothing to do with Google will work here. My phone runs entirely on Google based software so it barely even connects. We have been sorely let down by our travel …

Mongolia – Country No1

What can I say about Mongolia that you don't already know? Well I'm going to assume, like me before I went, you only know they have a lot of nomads, there are twice as many livestock as there are people and they once had a big old empire, courtesy of one Chinggis Khaan. First of …

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 5

The Adrenaline Bundle - Part 2 We rose super early today and headed over to the Cloud Forest for a guided tour. It was really good and informative, the guide had bird calls on his phone to try and attract birds he could see flying around. It worked too. It was most interesting to discover …

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 4

Today is another travel day, after breakfast at the hostel, we journey to Monte Verde. We start with a 45 minute drive to a lake then we transfer into a boat. Costa Rica has no natural lakes so we're are actually sailing across a reservoir. Our guide on this voyage, Ale, tells us how the …

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 3

The Adrenaline Bundle Part One We met up with our new American friends for breakfast at a local hostel. The whole town is filled with tourists, mostly young thrill seekers and packpackers so hostels are commonplace. I had pancakes... and rice and beans. Luckily rice and beans seem to go well with everything. La FortunaLa …

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 1

We started off in Mexico City, an early drive to the airport saw us there in good time, lucky really as we ended up at the wrong check in desk. Four out of 5 of our flights were with Iberia and we just blindly went to their desk. We weren't far from where we needed …