I arrived in Hanoi having spent most of the night crossing the border into Vietnam. The border crossing consisted of two checks; a Chinese one and a Vietnamese one. These took place in or around Pingxiang and meant that I was up until about 02:00 having my bags scanned and passport checked. Once I was […]

The journey to Nanning began in Sanya, where I got on a train to Haikou. I went to the train station after getting advice from numerous people and found queues of varying lengths, in front of signs with different Chinese characters on them in different colours. I had got up early to get a train […]

Hainan is an island off the south coast of China. I had to make this trip quick, as my Vietnamese visa had already started. The journey to Hainan included a stop-over in Maoming, as Kaiping didn’t have its own train station. As Maoming wasn’t in the Lonely Planet guidebook I had with me, this meant […]

I got a bus directly to Kaiping from Hong Kong, missing out Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou completely. It was worth it. I had a few options for where I stayed on the first night: Hong Kong. This would have meant getting a bus back to where I was previously on Hong Kong island and […]