After the tuk-tuk had dropped us off in Siem Reap and our coach had picked us up, we had a four hour journey to the Cambodia/Thailand border. We unloaded all of our stuff from the coach, got through passport control and immigration which took about an hour, in 35° heat (thank heavens we'd brought wet flannels with us - having those on the back of our necks really helped!) and then we were herded into the back of a pick-up which took us to a hotel about ten minutes away from the border where we were due to catch the next bus to take us to Bangkok.

We waited for a couple of hours for our bus, and when it finally came we sat on it for an hour before being told that it wasn't going anywhere - the demonstrations in the centre of Bangkok had become really serious and they were closing roads off everywhere. Some people got really upset about it as they were meant to be catching flights from Bangkok airport that night, but we weren't too worried as we had a few days before our flight, and if the bus company would rather not deliver us into a riot zone, that was fine with us. We had a meal at the hotel (for about £2) and just waited for news. The guy who had organised the bus offered us his sofa for the night if we didn't manage to get going again and he was having a barbecue before celebrating the water festival which he also invited us to. In the end, they decided it was safe enough for us to hit the road and so we left (slightly disappointed...) at about half past five in the afternoon. Our bus was half empty as quite a few people had decided to try other means of getting to Bangkok which meant the next five hours of the journey were fairly comfortable. We took a tuk-tuk to our hostel and after dodging the road blocks and diversions we arrived at midnight. And it was still 35°. And there was a blanket on our bed. And, thankfully, air conditioning :)

We spent a few lovely, relaxing days in Bangkok where we also got caught up in the water fights which are an integral part of their Water Festival. Everyone in the streets either has a giant super-soaker or tubs, bottles, anything which holds water, and everyone gets drenched - great fun and perfect when it's so hot you could fry an egg on the pavement.

We left Bangkok on a Wednesday morning and flew to Shanghai, arriving at our hostel at about midnight (back into the cold weather again). We stayed for a night and then headed off to Jiading, about an hour north of Shanghai, to our hotel where we had booked to stay for five nights for the Grand Prix. The hotel was quite posh, nicer than we were expecting for £30 a night, although after having spent four weeks in Indochina even that seemed very expensive! We very quickly discovered that the hotel had no record of our booking, even though we showed them the confirmation email we had received from Hostelworld, and they told us that they could only accommodate us for four of the five nights, and that they would have to charge us more for the weekend because it was the Grand Prix. After much negotiation, they put us in a suite, and ended up not having to move us for one night in the middle as they had originally said.

After checking in, we wandered around the local high street (there is practically nothing in Jiading apart from hotels and the GP circuit) and discovered that there were no restaurants where we could eat (at least not anywhere they had English menus or spoke English, and we didn't want to repeat the experience of just choosing something and ending up with pig intestines), so we found the supermarket and bought lots of ramen, fruit, drinks and crisps which would sustain us for our short stay. Thankfully we had basic kitchen facilities in our suite and so we ate well, if not particularly healthily, for our five days.

Aside from the hotel cock-up, we had a brilliant few days in Shanghai. We met with one of the photographers at breakfast on our first morning who recommended we head down to the track and see what's what. We had also been told that there would be a drivers' meet and greet in the afternoon and so after breakfast we decided to walk to the circuit (it really didn't look very far on the map, and the hotel shuttlebus would have cost us about £15 a day). It was a nice enough walk but it took us over an hour and a half! When we got there, there was really nothing much happening apart from everyone setting up stalls ready for the race weekend. In true Chinese style, there were security guards everywhere, most of whom didn't speak any English. We weren't supposed to go inside the grandstand area, but we managed to find a hole in a fence away from the guards, so we sneaked in anyway and strutted about looking as though we were meant to be there, which worked for a couple of hours while we had a good nose round. We even found the BBC commentary box and went in and had a look, and we also bumped into Jake Humphrey and had a chat with him which was cool. We found some Chinese fans who spoke a little English, and they were waiting for the drivers' meet and greet too, but they had VIP passes. It seems you couldn't get in without one, and the only way to get one was to have bought your tickets on the Shanghai Circuit website (which was all in Chinese) and then you are automatically in a lottery for the VIP passes. It was really frustrating, but we'd had an interesting day and were glad to have seen what we did.

On the Friday for free practice, we were allowed to sit anywhere we liked and so we watched much of the driving from the main grandstand in front of the garages so we could also see what was going on in there. We also took hundreds (literally) of photographs of the cars as they went round, getting the hang of it in time for the race on Sunday. The weather was beautiful on Sunday and we ended up in shorts and t-shirts; we made friends with some brilliant German guys who sat behind us - every month they each put €50 away and then every couple of years they fly off to one of the GP races and have a time of it. Simon was really glad when, five minutes before the race started, it began to rain. It made the race really exciting, and we had a brilliant time with lots of banter between us, the German fellas and other people all around us - a great weekend (and with Jenson and Lewis coming first and second, who could have asked for more?)

We left our hotel on the Monday afternoon, leaving behind several people who were stranded because their flights had been cancelled due to the volcanic ash problems. Our train left Shanghai at about half past six that evening, and we had booked a hard sleeper this time as there were no soft sleeper compartments left when we booked. We found out fairly quickly that the difference between hard- and soft-sleepers is that there are six of you in a compartment instead of four, there is no door, there is no light switch so the train driver controls when your lights go on and off, and the toilets are all hole-in-the-floor style (which we are now fairly used to). It's not too bad a way to travel, and it was fairly cheap, but the novelty wears off somewhat when you have no room to do anything other than lie down for nineteen hours.

We arrived in Hong Kong at two in the afternoon, and unable to find anywhere to stay because there was a convention on in town and all the hostels were full, we called Marie and asked if she wouldn't mind us arriving at hers one day early. She was brilliant and said yes, and so we took the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong island, then another ferry to Macau where Marie met us and took us back to her flat where she hadn't even finished moving in yet. We had a great evening catching up as the three of us hadn't seen each other since we left Hairspray in November. In the space of twenty four hours, we had had our passports stamped from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau - that's the most we've managed in such a short space of time on our whole trip!