The Trip

The trip is now fully planned and booked. Looking at it written down in front of me, I now realise that it is far from a simple holday aboad. If you can bare with me, I will try to explain what we have planned -

• Leaving Shijiazhuang, we are travelling to the south of China - to Nanning. A 1600 mile journey, that takes 25hours by train. We then spend the night in Nanning.
• The next morning we have to catch a bus that leaves Nanning, travels to the border with Vietnam and then takes us all the way to Hanoi - taking approximately 8hours.
• After 6 nights in Hanoi, we fly to Bangkok, arriving midday and then staying the night. We depart the following evening on a train to Surat Thani in southern Thailand - a journey that takes 11 hours.
• In Surat Thani, we catch a ferry that takes us to Koh Phangan, our destination in Thailand. We are staying there for 6 nights. After which we return on the ferry and train back to Bangkok, staying overnight.
• We then fly from Bangkok back to Macau in China and take a ferry from Macau to Shenzhen where we are staying a night.
• The next day we catch a 1hour train to Guangzhou, then take another train on the evening that takes us completely back to Shijiazhuang, a further 1250 miles.

What started off with - 'hmm, I think I quite fancy the idea of visiting Vietnam and maybe Thailand', is now almost ready - I even have a propper backpack that I am beginning to pack (Cheers Charlie).

Yesterday it took me three attempts to try and get a one-way ticket from Shijiazhuang to Beijing on Friday so that I can pick up our visas, a task that was only completed after I dragged Sandy to the ticket agent in a taxi for her to buy it for me. If I somehow manage to return to Shijiazhuang on May 20th, with all my limbs in tact and I haven't slapped an inept local, I will be amazed!