We had decided to get out of the city (Beijing) and so were off to Chengde. We first had to get across town to the bus station (only very slow trains to Chengde). This took about 1 hour 30min by bus/cab as the traffic was horrendous. We bought a ticket quite quickly - very helpful people at the bus station. We then had to get back through the Beijing traffic - took about 1 hour to clear the city. The journey was a little boring to start with but we then went thro...

Today was our last sightseeing day in Beijing so we had decided to take in the Summer Palace. It was about 12km away but we sussed out the right bus with no problem (apart from the normal Beijing traffic). The 1st stop in the palace was breakfast - we ended up in a reproduction old street from the 19th century. Tourist traps are the same the world over - very pretty but the food was expensive and awful.The summer palace was a wonderful place all the better for it...

Our trip to the wall started early. The tour included a free breakfast before we left at 7:00am. As there was only 3 on the tour - us and another Brit called Flash (real name Gordon) - we had a car not a mini bus. The route went out past Olympic park and saw the stadium. We had opted to go to the section at Mutianyu as it is less crowded. It took a couple of hours to get there and we decided on the wimp way up in a chair lift. We had 4 hours at the top and spent ...

Our first day in Beijing was getting organised - we started with a trip to the Vietnamese embassy to get visas. Getting around Beijing is so much easier than Russia - everything is in English as well as Chinese and the people are extremely helpful. Not so at the Vietnamese embassy - she could issue a visa but we had to be exact about our date of entry and her advise was to do this in Kunming before we left for Vietnam. We then tried to organise the rest of our st...

The Chinese TrainToday is my birthday and it started at 6:30 as we had to be on the 8:00 train. Fran was panicking about getting to the station but in the event it was no problem - the first car we flagged down stopped and gave us a lift for 3000 T (£1.50). When we got to the station, we found out the train was running an hour late - typical. It eventually turned up - a Chinese run train though there was no real difference to the Russian ones apart from the carr...