We loved Hong Kong! We had four days there, and used it to unwind after our time in China. The feel of the place struck a real chord with me; i…

At 8pm every night there's a free light show on the Hong Kong skyline, and it's a fantastic spectacle. The skyline itself is a really majestic sight …

This restaurant is one of the many Indian restaurants which are located in Chunking Mansion in Kowloon. An old apartment block, Chunking Mansion cont…

We only did a day trip to Macau; we did it on the ferry from Hong Kong. We weren't really interested in visiting the casinos, so concentrated our ti…

I shouldn't really hype this too much; I've heard tales of much worse journeys from fellow travellers - different league really. But this was one of …

We spent three days in the potato-and-cheese-heaven that is Yangshuo. Two of my favourite foods, which weren't available anywhere else we went in Chi…

Everyone we met who had anything to say about Chengdu told us that there were so many fantastic things to do that we'd end up staying ages; "You'll n…

It was time for the worst of my illness to come back. I'd had about three days of feeling almost normal again, but it was nearly time for it to retur…

Note: there is a proper expensive hotel in Xian called Royal Hotel. This is not it. This is a horrible little back-street place a few blocks west of …

We got an overnight train to Luoyang. Luoyang is home to the Dragon Gate Grottoes, a series of caves similar in idea to the Cloud Ridge Caves in Dato…

Pingyao is a pretty little walled town, with plenty of narrow streets complete with wooden-fronted houses. It's quite touristy: lots of shops selling…

If you're heading west out of Beijing, make sure you make a stop off in Datong to go and see these caves. They're a set of several caves, some as old…

We continued overland from Beijing to Xian, with a few stops along the way. We took around four days to make the journey. Our first stop was in Dato…

Haggling is not one of my favourite pass-times (some would say that doesn't make me a proper traveller). However, I can handle it better in some coun…

We wanted to take advantage of the chance to have some really reasonably priced sushi (and Japanese food in general) while we were in Beijing, and th…

By the time we came to leave Ulaan Baatar, by train for Beijing, I had become iller to the extent that I managed 24 visits to the toilet in one …

There's an English pub on Sukhbaatar square in Ulaan Baatar, called Dave's Place. It's a little tucked away, in the basement down the side of a large…

The flight back to Ulaan Baatar was much less eventful that the flight out had been. As part of our organised tour we also had some sightseeing lined…

This was actually a pretty decent Italian restaurant, which I didn't expect to find in Ulaan Baatar. And the interior is fantastic; there are all man…

After a day in Ulaan Baatar, we joined up with our pre-booked tour, which was to take us to an Eagle Hunting Festival (hunting with eagles, not for e…

The best single thing we did in our year travelling the world was to join a tour to go to a Kazakh Eagle Hunting Festival in the Olgiy province of we…

Another two days on the train brought us to the Mongolian capital. The scenery on the Russian side of the border still consisted almost exclusively o…

It felt really exciting to be in Siberia. It's one of those places you hear about, but never think you'll have any reason for going to. We stopped o…

We stumbled upon this restaurant a little by accident; it's hidden upstairs through another much less good looking restaurant, on the pedestrianised …

We spent four days in a row on the train, to get from Moscow to Irkutsk. Because we booked the Trans-Mongolian as a package through Monkey Business, …

There are a few branches of this place in Moscow. There's one on Arbat Ulitsa, near Smolenskaya metro. There are many great things about this rest…

We found this restaurant by virtue of a flyer which was on display in the lobby of our hotel. It was our last night in Moscow, and we fancied a break…

Three eventful days in Moscow! We stayed in the AST Hof hotel, because it was on the list of hotels we could book through Monkey Business, the compa…

We booked this hotel through our touro company - otherwise we wouldn't have considered staying here. It cost much more than we wanted to spend: over …

We enjoyed this hostel. We got ourselves a double room here, rather than staying in thie dorm. The room was very basic, but pretty clean and tidy. Th…

I don't normally find myself able to stay in museums for any great length of time; I get restless and tired. But the Hermitage is the most fantastic …

We flew out from Manchester airport on the first leg of many of a year away from home. Neither of us had ever done travelling on this scale before; t…

I think that this restaurant was part of a chain. The theme is village life, with waitresses dressed in what look like traditional country costumes, …