And our adventure has started! First stop - Beijing!

In Beijing for nearly two weeks now.. We were planning on heading somewhere a bit more rural, but with the Chinese new year approaching every chinaman and his dog are desperately trying to get out of the city for some quality family time. We've found that trying to get a train ticket this time of year in china is like 'climbing tree to catch fish' - a waste of time. Not to worry though, there is heaps to see in Beijing and the food is delicious so we're hanging around and looking forward to celebrating our second new years for 2011 in china's capital!

We've checked out most of the tourist hot spots including the great wall, the summer palace and tian'anmen square, watched workers carving a happiness ball from local jade and stretch a silkworm's cocoon out to make pajamas, and eaten a whole mouth watering duck at a traditional Peking duck restaurant!

We spent one day in beijing zoo, which was well stocked with all sorts of animals from all over the globe. They even had an Australian section! The zoo gardens were beautiful and spacious, unfortunately we couldn't say the same for most of the enclosures. The focus seemed to be more on quantity of animals than quality of life.. On a lighter note, we seemed to be the only westerners around and found ourselves being just as much of a novelty for the other visitors as the toucans!

The Wangfujing night markets were a great example of the chinese habit of eating anything that moves. For our dinner we had a choice of centipedes, sea horses, tarantulas, star fish, cicadas and various other creepy crawlies, mostly deep fried and skewered. After being convinced that we wouldn't be paralysed or turn purple, we decided on a dinner of scorpion kebabs and skewered snake with Chinese spices!

As a city, Beijing is a great place for a holiday. Everyone is so friendly and will go out of their way to help you out. Even more endearing is their ability to cook amazing food! We get excited for every meal to see what interesting combination we will get!

Jess ate the spiciest meal of her life - three quarters of it was fresh dried chillies - and somehow managed to enjoy it! For anyone going to china, make sure you try a hot pot! They serve up a big simmering pot of spicy broth on a hot plate and offer a selection of raw meat, noodles and vegies for you to cook at your table. They even make the noodles in front of you. Aidan had a go at stretching the noodles out and he looked so excited it was hilarious!

Jess has been enjoying the toilets here too - much scarier than any fried scorpion! We were expecting squat toilets but not open rooms with lots of squatters and no doors or dividers! It adds a whole new dimension to the concept of a public toilet! Fortunately this type of toilet has so far only been sighted in the hutong districts - Beijing's version of urban slums.

We're planning on uploading some photos in the next few days, so stay tuned. Until then, happy new year! Again! Bring on the year of the rabbit!