Hey guys, I've just left Beijing for Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia and i have to say that Beijing has been my favourite city i have been to yet on my travels. There is so much to see and do that 4 days was just not long enough there (we would have stayed longer but the train to Mongolia only leaves on a saturday and wednesday and our chinese visa has just about run out), so i'm going to come back into Beijing after Mongolia. The first day we went to Tianamen Square, this square is huge and looks really good at night, all the statues and buildings all get lit up. the Forbiden city was nice but once you've seen one building in the city you've seen them all so we didn't take to long in there and then we came out for the flag changing which happens every sunset and sunrise, the traffic is stopped and the road is shut off then these soldiers march out of the forbiden city and go to the flag pole in Tianamen Square, they take the flag down and mach back into the forbiden city. All of this takes 2 minutes and 7 seconds and hundreds of people watch this lining up around the flag pole hours before it starts just to get in a good position to see it.. i'm glad i'm taller than most chinese by about a foot. The Johnnie Walker Classic was interesting to say the least. After rushing about trying to sort out my Mongolian visa i jumped into a taxi to get me to the bus station so i could get to the course. It wasn't untill i got to Changping that i realised that the course was miles away from where the bus dropped me off, so i jumped into another taxi (more like a little sandwhich van) and made the motion of a golf swing, the driver nodded and we were on our way... He only takes me to a golf course the wrong side of Changping!! After about an hour or so we eventually arive at the pine valley golf course for the first day of the competition. I pay my enterance fee and walk to the club house to get the tee off times only to find out that the golf has been called off due to high winds!!! how pissed off was I!!! so i spent the couple of hours walking around the empty course and watching the players practise wating to see if the golf will start again. At 3:30 it was called off for the rest of the day... Time for that long taxi ride home! The last day in Beijing we went to the great wall, this was the best thing i have done in Beijing, a 10k/m trek along the wall on a perfect day, it was so clear and warm we couldn't have asked for a better day. The trek was alot eaiser than i thought it would be, some parts took it out of you (parts of the wall had a 70 degree incline) but most of it was fine. At the end of the trek you had could either walk down to the village or take a zip line over the huge lake and then get a boat to the village. I took the later option. The zip line was great fun! Our last night in Beijing we decided to get hammered with the people we met on our great wall trip at our hostel. we were ment to take it easy because we had to get the (30 hour) train to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia but we didn't worry about that!! SILLY BOYS!!! Come 11 o'clock i was rocking and that's when our hostel stated it's happy hour (happy hour was from 11pm till 8am), 2 big bottles of beer for 2 yuan which is about 15 pence for 2 bottles of beer.. Cheap as chips!! By 3 o'clock i was smashed, it was then in all our wisdom that we decided to stay up all the way through and sleep on the train.. Another silly move!! At 4am we decided to get a shot just to keep us going, we ended up buying a bottle of gin and the rest is history. We running around the train station trying to find our train hammered, we found it with 10 minutes to spare. Close call!! I slept for the next 6 hours snoring my head off (i was told this by the german girl and the 2 mongolian guys i was sharing a cabin with). Never again!! I had the worst hangover in history, and let me tell you that a train is not the best place to be hungover! Never mind, onto Mongolia! Speak to you all soon. Christopher