Hello people

Apologies for not updating the blog for so long, but at least you can read all about Mongolia and our first week in China!

Regarding the vodka mentions it is completly medicinal, I caught a cold on our first day in Russia and have been coughing since, but I gave up and got some antibiotics, which cost 2 pounds for a week supply!!

We decided that after all those days on the train we would stay in a hotel rather than a hostel, http://www.sihehotel.com/en/index.asp it was really lovely we didn't want to check out for the hostel!

When we arrived at the hostel they did not have our booking, which we made over 2 months ago then they tried to make us pay the rack rate rather than the hostel.com price we had booked - so we bartered with them and also said we would go to another cheaper hostel….. suddenly we got it cheaper than what we had booked!

So my first introduction to hostel life - I went to the toilet and there was poo on the toilet wall and on writing this (Saturday, April 04, 2009) it is still there L

So enough of that,

The atm eat Herman's visa and it took us 24 hours to get it back - that was a nightmare if it hadn't been for the lovely lady at the hotel who helped as nobody at the bank understood!

We went to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden city, which was ok, I expected more examples of old Chinese life. We arrived early to try and avoid the crowds but the amount of people was incredible, mostly Chinese. Although we did bump into a couple of english girls we met on the train.
Next day we went to The Yonghe Temple , also known as the "Palace of Peace and Harmony Lama Temple", the "Yonghe Lamasery", or - popularly - the "Lama Temple" is a temple and monastery of the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism located in the northeastern part of Beijing, China. It is one of the largest and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. It was amazing to watch people actually praying to buddha and burning incense in honour.

We went to a big market/mall can't remember the name now, but I bought some knock off Deisel and Armani jeans and Herman bought DVD's for 80p.

Next big thing was to visit the Summer Palace which we took the metro and then a bus which we did not pay for - we jumped on and jumped off with other western people J I loved it here it is amazingly beautiful, the grounds are huge and stunning we took some photos I'll ask Herman to try and put lots on here but I also bought lots of postcards which I will send to as many people as I can. We spent all day here wondering around the grounds and through the many palace buildings, we had a little picnic in the sun.

Thursday was spent in the temple of heaven-The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest. We also watched some oldies doing some tai chi and playing a board game that looks a bit like draughts on the way back we stopped for dinner at some street vendors we had a spring roll, battered banana and a beef roll but definitely not dog hotpot.

Up very early today to visit the Great Wall we got the bus at 7am it took an hour and there was still queues of people there already. There was absolutely nobody there that talks english, they would not serve us at the ticket booth just kept pointing to walk in the entrance and there was no way I was going to walk miles up to be told to go back and buy tickets but Herman dragged me up and luckily there is another ticket booth. After debating which way to walk as again there is no map or information in English we decided to turn to the right, it was pretty quiet at this time (8am) we walked for about an hour and decided to have breakfast of tea and a dairylea sandwiches. By now it was getting quite busy, we got hijacked by hundreds of school children who wanted to take a picture of us, they where very friendly so that was fine, but after posing for 25 odd pictures with skanky looking men I had enough and said no more, which upset many people. (Tough!)

I have no idea how far we walked but we walked for 4 hours up and down some seriously steep hills and steps but it was an incredible feeling to be there. We walked in a loop and sadly we had to exit through the bear park, It was heart breaking these poor bears overfed with no space to move and there feet looked in really bad shape I think they had also had there teeth removed. People where throwing stuff at them (I will send photos to peta but I don't think there is anything they can do but I know I will feel better having done something)

Once we had we had the rest of our packed lunch of dairylea sandwiches and crisps, Herman wanted to visit the Ming Tombs but we couldn't get there from here, so he may go tomorrow while I shop sorry I mean visit a temple!

I woke up today with 7 mosquito bites mostly on my face - I am not happy!!

Will write more later.