Tuesday 22 September.

We want to leave early so we can see as much as possible! We share our last block of noodles for breakfast. We leave by about 8:30 and head to the square. We end up going to the forbidden city instead. But man what a rigmarole! We only have card, so Malcolm stands in one line to be told wrong line. Then next line to be told no card! The 2 ATM we find don't take our card. Finally we try a different card and get some cash. New line and tickets finally. We get into the city which was started in 1400 AD for emperors palace home. The amount of ppl coming in is just so much. It's quite pretty. But must buildings the same. I wonder how long it will be preserved for with so many ppl each day. I remember chris from Sunday mentioned that the world heritage had limited the amount of visitors to a certain site to 80,000 a day. I wonder how anything can be preserved with that amount of ppl! After the palace city we head to the square. The security is pretty robust. You are always going through bag checks and past officers. We are just too late to go and see chairman Mao's mausoleum There are nice gardens and displays in the square that look immaculately cared for. We decide to walk to what's dumbed as 'snack street'. We get distracted by a china mobile store but in the end do not go with the sim. It's nearly $90 for two weeks. We walk past it but eventually find snack street! It's tiny booths selling everything from seahorse's, octopus, other creepy crawly's, corn, potato , tofu and dumplings to name a few. We are able to get enough to sate our hunger. Next we are off to the temple of heaven. I'm exhausted by this time, so just want to see this and get going back to the hotel. It's a beautiful complex of large grassed and treed areas. The temple is very nice. Back at the hotel we just rest our feet while Malcolm tries to figure our thorny problem of getting from Guilin to Hong Kong. Apparently there is a public holiday week that we never knew about and pretty much everything is booked up totally. We find one option: standing for 12 hours on a train in a corridor. And $50usd for that privilege! We are hoping there will be a bus when we get there and we can scrap the train idea. Just as we get back it pours down! The predicted rain for the day. The rain clears; We head out to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner. It's down a dark street, off a bright street but the restaurant is very nice inside. There is a large selection and everything is yum! Yay! On our walk back there are several different groups moving/exercising to music. It looks fun.