Bye bye China

So China:



Everyone said that China was hard to travel in and difficult but I found it very easy and when you turned up for a train or bus it ran on time and actually went to the destination you were expecting!  People in China are also very friendly and helpful, even though many of them can't speak a word of English they will go out of their way to try and help you.


Food - well to be honest the food for me in China wasn't that great.  If you eat meat it would have been fantastic as you have such a choice of dishes to choose from and being able to just point and say 'I'll have what they are eating' is so easy.  I didn't have the luxury of that but I did manage to get some good meals, and the fried tofu was the best! it was just difficult to communicate that I didn't want meat and often I ended up with fried rice or noodles for every meal or with weird bean curd which is so strange its like dried skin yuck.  One day I did just have fried lettuce and rice - the guy at the counter assured me it was a type of 'spinach' but it was just fried lettuce.

I think if I went again I would take a few essential items:

Phrase book - entertains the Chinese a lot when you try and speak with the phrase book and is helpful s you can point at the chinese characters
List of different vegetarian things like 'fried noodles' etc or 'can I have that with no meat' so you can just point at meals, very useful and does work!
Plastic cup - you get free hot water in most hostels, trains and bus stops so having a plastic mug and some tea bags is a good , means you can have free cups of green tea! 
Another person - China is very big so often you dont run into other travellers which can be good but after 4 days of not speaking to someone it gets a bit boring!