Moved to my new hotel and met my new group - we are around 13 - a few singles and couples of various ages - various nationalities too so thats nice. My new hotel is in the more up market side of town so decided that as my wardrobe had been packed mainly with the Trans-siberian in mind, I may buy some new clothes - wondered into a shop and the young young shop assistant promptly SHOUTED over ' lady, lady, zis teenie weenie ' YOU ARE BIG - you go upstairs' - all t...

Decided it was time for some modern architecture so made my way to the Olympic Village to see the Birds Nest Stadium as Ive always liked the look of it. Paid extra for what they described as an air tunnel - had no idea what it was, but decided to give it a go。 It was actually walkway on the roof!!? - it was slightly scary as the ground was mesh and you could see right down, but the views were great and it was quite exciting! Although the stadium itself was p...

Climbed up to the top of The Great Wall and toboganned down - what a laugh! The Great Wall is amazing, what a feat and the views are to die for, but couldnt help but think of our VP at work as I climbed up and down huge, uneven stairs with no handrail - those pesky ancient Chinese obviously didnt do a risk assessment before they started work :) - the constant brain washing at work has definitely paid off on me...:)。 After leaving The Wall, travelled back to the...

Completed the last leg of the Trans-siberian！ It was an experience, the trip from UB to Beijing was short compared to the last leg - Chinese passport control was tedious as I expected, but the change from the Russian railway guage to the Chinese one was pretty interesting. They took our passports to check our visas then the whole train was taken into a huge shed. The carriages were split up - the whole carriage, with us inside it was lifted up on a winch thi...