Category: Asia

Singapore

Posted on by

  Part 1: We flew to Singapore with Jetstar, a really good budget airline in Asia. On arrival we were instantly happy – it was organised, cosmopolitan and very friendly! We took the subway to our hostel, found it no problem and checked into our dorm. Singapore is a complete mix of cultures and ethnicities which appealed to us instantly. After sorting through our stuff we headed downstairs and were basically forced to drink beer by the hostel owner to celebrate the upcoming National Day! We met a nice couple from Italy who gave us loads of tips for Tioman Continue Reading →

Malaysia

Posted on by

  Kuala Lumpur We arrived at KL Sentral Station and then got totally confused by their transport systems. They have subway, monorial, komuter trains and others – of course the sign posting was pretty useless – so it took us a while to locate the line we needed. We found our hostel straight away and checked in. It was quite a nice place with unlimited supply of coffee and toast which is a nice touch when you’re skint like us!

Cambodia

Posted on by

  Siem Reap Laura: We awoke at 6 am to catch the bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia, an 18 hour journey with border crossings. In typical fashion the bus failed to depart on time and the driver wasted a further hour by stopping for gas, buying bbq chicken and getting his wind screen washed! Buses in South East Asia are good quality, all air conditioned and pretty cheap HOWEVER, they are completely disorganised which surprised us a lot considering the amount of tourists who come here. After about 3 hours we arrived at the 4000 islands to collect the Continue Reading →

Laos

Posted on by

  Luang Prabang Ahmad: After heading back to Kunming, we spent a couple of days relaxing, doing a little shopping (no H&M in Laos or Cambodia) and generally building ourselves up to deal with some bargaining again (I didn’t enjoy it in India, and I don’t enjoy it now). We had booked a sleeper bus from Kunming, China to Luang Prabang, Laos, a 28 hour journey, though it did have sleeper beds. After speaking to the hostel (who arranged our bus tickets) we got onto a local bus to the bus station, the hostel told us to get off at Continue Reading →

Kunming & Dali

Posted on by

  Laura: We arrived into Kunming (the capital of Yunnan – a province in China famous for it’s beauty) in the morning. We exited the train and were over the moon to discover it was about 25 degrees and low humidity! In Yangshuo we only had to walk for 5 minutes before our sunglasses were falling off our ridiculously sweaty faces. We were collected by a lovely girl called Jenny from The Hump Hostel. She took us on a public bus to the hostel and we got checked in no fuss. The hostel had great communal areas but the dorms Continue Reading →

Yangshuo & Xingping

Posted on by

  Ahmad: We got a hard sleeper train to Guilin from Shanghai, and had a pretty uneventful trip. Both of us agree that Indian trains (when you manage to book one at least) are superior to Chinese trains, the berths are more comfortable and you get some semblance of privacy as most of the cabins have curtains.

Shanghai

Posted on by

  Ahmad: We arrived into Shanghai in the evening and headed straight to the Captain Hostel, I had some really fond memories of the Captain Hostel (I had lived here previously) and was looking forward to being back. On arrival we checked in and got up to our respective dorms (no mixed dorm’s at the captain), we got ourselves sorted then headed up to the rooftop bar, the hostel itself hadn’t had a refurb in quite some time (I imagine since I was in china 7 years ago) and I was bitterly disappointed to see how far it had fallen. Continue Reading →

Beijing

Posted on by

  Ahmad: We were a little sad to leave Xian; we also had some real difficulty getting train tickets for Beijing. In the end only had ‘Hard seat’ tickets were available.

Xian

Posted on by

  Laura: We arrived at Chengdu train station expecting it to be chaotic but it was very well organised. Ahmad was quite disappointed to note that nobody was smoking or spitting and was suddenly fearful that smoking was banned on Chinese trains. We boarded and found our sleeper cabin which was very similar to Indian ‘3AC’ class. We were travelling on ‘hard sleeper’ which consists of 6 beds to a cabin among about 10 of these in one train car. You can travel ‘hard seat’ which is basically loads of seats in a train cabin, ‘standing’ where you just sit Continue Reading →

Chengdu

Posted on by

  Laura: We flew to China via Lhasa in Tibet and saw the most beautiful sight in the world for free! The snowy peaks of the Himalaya rising out of the clouds to meet a perfect blue sky. Apparently tourists often commission planes to do this but we just got lucky! We arrived at Chengdu Airport around 4pm and after hitting the ATM we found our pick up man from the hostel and made our way there.