Our final Trans Mongolian journey took us from UB to Beijing, around 1500Km; this took 30 hours with about a 5 hour border crossing. I don't think I mentioned before that every kilometer is marked out at the side of the track…..just in case you're really bored you can keep an eye on your progress. At the border the Mongolian and Chinese health officials came on to check no one had swine flu symptoms. The Chinese also had a thermometer to take everyone's forehead temperature. We passed.

The Red Lantern hostel picked us up and we got our first glance of this huge city, which is the same size as Belgium and has population of over 15 million! We spent the next few days taking in the sights. These included The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and The Summer Palace.

We also took in some of the modern sights, The Olympic Stadium and The Water Cube at the Olympic Village. One thing Beijing is not short of are amazing buildings, crazy architecture and each high rise trying to better the next.

We have managed with our lack of Chinese as Beijing is well equipped for the English speaker (I think the city had a major revamp leading up to the Olympics; lucky for us!) When we've been in restaurants we usually go by the pictures in the menu, there have been a few occasions when Chinese people have come over and translated for us…very kind, but a lot of the time it's hard to be 100% sure exactly what type of meat you are eating…. Hopefully nothing too bad. We have been served a chickens foot with lunch, seen some kind of deep fried worms and a guy from our hostel reports that he think he may accidently eaten donkey for one meal! Such a contrast to Russia, a very welcoming country so far.

The food we have had had been fantastic, round every corner and down every Hutong there are places for food. We can eat out for around 6pounds for 2. The usual dishes, as you get at home are available and we can't understand how the Chinese nation is so slim considering all this food on their door step!

We also put some of our Wedding gifts towards doing a fantastic Great Wall trek (on the 29th July). We had a very early start and trekked 10km from one section to another. Some good photos.

There was a good crowd in the hostel so we went out a couple of nights to sample Beijing night life and some live music. So it's been a good start to China, we're now off for a couple of days in Shanghai (on a train that travels at over 200km/hr) and then off to Japan.

Hope you're all well, love Brian and Kim