China: Chengdu

Our trip from Xi'An to Chengdu was an overnight one which meant we got to experience our first sleeper train of the travels. Fortunately we managed to get a 'soft sleeper' cabin which meant we had actual beds for the impending 16.5 hour journey - some CRAZY people did the whole journey on hard plastic seats! Each cabin sleeps four people which meant we ended up sharing with a cute Chinese lady, and has a door so is basically private. We were really surprised to find our cabin came complete with a TV (which we soon came to hate when we found out we had no control over when it was switched on or off), a cute little rose, a kettle (for the obligatory english tea craving) and even complementary flip flops. We would definitely recommend the soft sleeper for journeys of this length if affordable - the beds were really comfortable and came with a duvet and pillow for extra comfort so we managed to sleep right through the night (excluding the occasional train jerks which made us feel like we were going to end up flying across the cabin).

Our First Overnight Sleeper Train - Excited Teds!

The hostel we stayed at whilst in Chengdu was called the Flip Flop Hostel and was really cosy. It was really central (about a 5 minute walk away from the Pedestrian Street and the subway) and had a really cute park next door which was often filled with locals playing games, exercising, or just generally chilling out which was really nice to see. The staff at the hostel were really friendly and always ready to help with any questions we had. We also had our first experience of laundry during our stay which was eventful. Apparently hanging clothes up to dry in your dorm room is a criminal offence to the maid who ranted at us for about 10 minutes after we did so.

We spent a lot of time wandering around whilst in Chengdu - the city is so huge that we had plenty to do. One recommendation we had from our hostel was to visit Master Kong Chef's Restaurant - rated as the 'best beef noodle restaurant in Chengdu'. Although it took us absolutely ages to find, (the map of the city we had was more of a hindrance than a help because half of the streets were missing) it definitely didn't disappoint - we ended up going back for a second night because it was so good. Although a little more pricey than we had recently been spending on meals because of our traveller budget (¥28) it was sooooo worth it. We tried both the beef and mushroom noodles and the beef and mushroom with rice - both were delicious.

The highlight of our stay in Chengdu was our visit to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, home to the most beautiful animals eeeevvvveeeeerrrrrr. As with all of our trips, we decided to do this by ourselves rather than going with the planned tour by the hostel because it would save us money. We had to get two local buses to get there which were only ¥1 each per person and entrance fee was just ¥58 when we arrived (the hostel tour was over ¥100!) The park is filled with bamboo forests and woods to simulate the pandas' natural environment and there were lots of climbing apparatus for the pandas to play on - they all looked really happy and had so much room to roam around. There are soooo many pandas there, of all different ages and lots of signposts to explain which panda you were looking at, how old they were and their personality etc. which was really cute. We were told before going that the best time to visit was around 9:30am because that is when the pandas eat and following this they tend to sleep for the rest of the day. We were able to get really close to them whilst they were eating, playing, and resting, giving us the perfect opportunity to take 12894269619437 photos and make multiple 'awwwww', 'eeeeeeek', and 'ooooooh' sounds simultaneously. They are seriously the most amazing animals - many of them genuinely look like men dressed up in suits - it's crazy just how human-like they are in some of their mannerisms. As cute as the giant pandas were, when we finally got to see the baby pandas in their nursery we literally could not stop cooing over how adorable they were - definitely worth the ridiculous queue to see them (the biggest queue of the whole day). There is also the opportunity to spend a half day actually holding/feeding/learning about the pandas but that was around £200 and unfortunately a bit too over-budget for us.

Another one of our favourite spots in Chengdu were the Jinli Ancient Streets which were a number of streets filled with local food, handmade ornaments, bars, live music, and pretty lanterns. The atmosphere was thriving which made it a really nice place to spend the evening. We spent hours just wandering up and down and sampled some street food whilst sitting amongst the locals which gave us a real feel for the town.

Here are some of our favourite pictures of our time in Chengdu:

Flipflop Hostel, Chengdu

Flipflop Hostel, Chengdu

Someone is happy she found 'real' milk!

Hellooooo Pandas!!

Tough Day?

The babies having a nap in the nursery

Jinli Ancient Street

Peace out Chengdu!

The Happy Wanderers 

♥

China: Xi'an

After a 4 hour train journey on the famous bullet train, we finally arrived in Xi'an! Usually this trip would have taken about 20 hours on an overnight sleeper train, but thanks to the bullet train which travelled at 310 kmph (and Sporcle for keeping us entertained), we got there in no time.

Shuyuan Hostel, Xi'an

We didn't have much luck with the weather in Xi'an, it rained probably 85% of the time. However, this didn't dampen our fun! First up we visited the Bell Tower which was built in 1384 during the early Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). It is a symbol of the city which marks the geographical centre of the ancient city. A few minutes walk from here is the Drum Tower. In ancient times, each city would have had a Bell Tower and a Drum Tower as a way of keeping time. The bell would be rung at dawn to mark the beginning of the day and the drum beat at night to mark the end. If you enter the Bell Tower (¥35) you can get a panoramic view of the city. Views from the Drum Tower overlook the Muslim Quarter. 

Next we visited The Temple of Eight Immortals which is the biggest Tao Temple in Xi'an (¥3). This was an amazing experience as it is still a very active temple with people praying and burning incense. 

As controversial as it may be, we decided not to visit the Terracotta Warriors whilst in Xi'an. We spoke to numerous people at our hostel, all of which were very underwhelmed by the experience - at a cost of ¥150! We visited the Shaanxi Province History Museum (free entry with passport) where we learned a lot about how China has developed over its entire history throughout each Dynasty. There was a large section of the museum dedicated to the Terracotta Warriors where they even had some on display. This was enough for us as we didn't feel we would gain very much from visiting the site itself.

Here are a few of our favourite pictures from our time in Xi'an

The Bell Tower

Having Fun with the Locals  

Standard Chinese Child in the Background!

Giant Wild Goose Pagoda

Sarah Becoming Mulan

The Temple of the Eight Immortals

Burning Incense at the Temple

Bridge at the Temple

Exploring the Market in the Muslim Quarter

The Happy Wanderers 

♥

China: Beijing

Here we goooo!

After a 2 hour drive to London Heathrow, 11 hour flight to Hong Kong and a 3 hour flight to Beijing...

We arrivedddd!

Disclaimer: Sarah is not actually upset, she was temporarily a snail.
P.s. she has since recovered fully

After all the travelling, the only thing we wanted to do was to jump into bed and sleep. However we all suffered with moderate jet lag for the first few nights which resulted in us staying up till 3am and sleeping till mid morning... woopsie! Nonetheless we still managed to explore Beijing and see lots of amazing sights. 

First on the list was The Forbidden City. For almost 500 years it served as the home of emperors as well as being the ceremonial and political centre of the Chinese government. Entrance fee for adults is ¥60 or ¥20 for students. It took us around 3 hours to walk around listening to our audio guide (¥20). We felt the extra price for this was worth it as it helped us learn more about the history of the Dynasties as most the sign posts were in Chinese. 

Next we visited the Great Wall of China. It was started in the 7th Century but what remains today was mostly built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and was created in order to protect China's northern border and to prevent invasions from the Huns. As the wall is massive (5,500 miles) it is split into many different sections. This meant that we had to choose which section we wanted to pay our visit. We read that most people go to the Badaling section of the Wall (8.75 million visitors on the 3rd October 2014!!!), so we decided to give that a miss and try our luck somewhere else in the hope it would be less busy. We decided on the Mutianyu section of the wall as this was accessible by public bus and then private taxi. We paid ¥12 for the bus and ¥10 for the taxi (per person each way) then ¥158 (per person) for entrance and a cable car to the Great Wall, a total cost of ¥202. This was an absolute bargain as tours from the hostel were ¥280 - got to look after those pennies! 

We also visited the area of Nan Luo Gu Xiang which is one of Beijing's oldest Hutongs (old alley). We particularly enjoyed the real mix of old and new, exploring until well into the evening as we couldn't get enough of the cute cafes, clothing and handicraft shops. There was plenty of street food on offer suitable for even the fussiest of eaters (Sarah *couughh*). Wandering through Nan Luo Gu Xiang lead us to Hou Hai Lake which was lined with bars and restaurants. The entire place had a very chilled out vibe with live music and plenty of sofas to relax on. Each bar was covered with bright neon signs which really made the lake glisten. 

Here are a few of our favourite pictures from our time in Beijing:

Night Market

Hou Hai Lake

Cute Postcard Shop

Forbidden City

Forbidden City

Princess of China

Getting the Cable Car up to the Great Wall

Arriving at the Mutianyu Section of the Great Wall

The Happy Wanderers 

♥

We're Back!

Very very veeeery sorry we haven't updated our blog all this time. We've been in China for 30 days and as you may or may not know China are extremely strict on what you can access online - we've had absolutely no access to any social media websites whatsoever! We're currently in Hong Kong though so we'll be playing catch up with the next few blog posts. Hopefully from now on we wont have this problem again and can continue blogging as much as we can.

The Happy Wanderers 

♥

1 More Sleeeeep!

So tomorrow marks the start of our adventure! We've already begun our long string of emotional goodbyes and its fair to say the nerves are kicking in. We could write a very heartfelt blog post but instead we thought we would inform you of other delights that you can look forward to whilst we are away..

We are delighted to introduce our YouTube channel HappyWanderersTV ! 

Sarah has been a YouTube addict for a few years now and with her non-stop chatter about it I decided to give it a go and have never looked back. We often have nights in just catching up on our YouTube subscriptions and even met a few of our favourites at a recent event in London.

Bethan, Shaanxo, Sarah

Sarah, FunForLouis, Bethan

So taking some inspiration from them we thought we'd give it a go. We're hoping to film as much of our experience as possible and will be posting the videos on our channel as often as we can. It will mean that these memories are stored forever for us to look back on.

Staaaay Tuneed! 

The Happy Wanderers 

♥

The Horror of Shopping for Travel Insurance

If you've known me for over 10 years or are a very close friend of mine you could know that I once had a serious life threatening medial condition. Whilst this is now a memory of the dark and distant past it still very much plagues me when trying to purchase travel insurance. I've been browsing comparison websites all morning for a policy that is actually willing to cover me - to yet no avail. 

Your average person doing a backpacking trip like we're planning can get insurance very easily for around £150 and above. However, I have to meticulously read each policy document thoroughly and pay particular attention to the language/phrases used, usually to find that these policies are not happy to cover me. 

I have to face questions like this:

'Have you EVER had treatment for..'- well yes I did, but not for over 10 years! I'm over it so why aren't you?! I also hate the way they always invite you to phone them to disclose things but are never happy to cover you anyway so it's just a waste of everyone's time, eurgh!

After getting tired of reading policy after policy and in true grandma style, I thought I'd try browsing travel insurance companies that specialise in offering cover for people who have past medial conditions. Yes, it would be more expensive but its better than no insurance right? However what I found was that they do not even offer insurance for trips over 28 days... perfect, now what?

 I'm a little annoyed (if you didn't notice), help!

Bethan xx

Applying For Our China Visa

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For what feels like the entire summer we have been trying to get everything prepared so we can send off our visa applications for China. Having never filled out a visa application before this was extremely daunting. If you didn't know already, China are extremely strict on who they allow into the country. Therefore, we had to have every little detail of our trip confirmed before they would even look at our application. When we say every detail, we mean everyyy detail - each application is around 50 pages long, filled with all our hostel bookings, train journeys and internal flight details.

We are extremely proud to say that we have done this completely independently with little to no help from our travel agent (STA form in background is for RTW flights, not China details). We did receive one quote from a travel agent for some trains that we were thinking of taking during our trip which turned out to be 3x the price compared to the company we booked with. Shopping around really does make a difference, as with a trip like this every penny counts! If you were wondering what websites/contacts we used to plan everything then continue reading. 

Hostel Bookings

With budget as one of our main priorities, we will be staying in youth hostels for around 99% of our trip (other 1% will probably be overnight trains/ park benches - Joke!). For booking hostels in China we used either HostelWorld or HostelBookers. Surprisingly we found that if there is no space in a hostel on one website there is often space on the other website.

Train Journeys

Organising our train journeys has been the most difficult part of the process for us. It's not like in the UK where you can go on to one website and type in 'I want to go from here to here, on this day, at this time...' internet bookings for trains in China, believe or not don't exist! You have to be a person within China at the train station to make a booking - absolutely mental. So obviously we needed a little help with this. 

A friend recommended a company called China DIY Travel which she has used before. They are an Australian couple who live and work in China therefore have access to all information which can be very difficult to access over the internet. All we had to do was fill in an enquiry form of all the train booking we required, they sent us a price quote which we agreed and now they are going to purchase train tickets on our behalf. The tickets will be waiting for us at each train station, along with photographs of the inside of the train station (apprently they can be a nightmare to navigate) and even written Chinese instructions we can give to our taxi driver. I'm sure we will be most grateful for these extra efforts when we arrive. 

Internal Flights

We originally planned to use only trains to get around China as we assumed this would be the cheapest option. However, when one quote came back for over £200pp for one train we decided to investigate if there were cheaper alternatives. As big users of SkyScanner this was our first port of call. If you have never heard of SkyScanner, its like a Compare the Market for aeroplane travel. So now instead of catching a very overpriced 22 hour train journey, we're getting a more reasonable 1 hour flight for £78pp. 

We ran into further problems when trying to come up with a plan of how we were going to leave China and enter Hong Kong for a few days visit. As there was no direct train from our final destination in China (Guilin), and sick and tired of reading Lonely Planet forums, we decided another flight was in order. This was a similar price to the train, however saved us around 15 hours travelling time. 

For anyone planning a trip to China, there is light at the end of the tunnel, we promise

The Happy Wanderers 

♥