Beijing...(last country!!)

Very i havent updated this for about a week or so as net cafes were proving evry hard to find in beijing for some unbeknown reason! anways right nows im in Xi'an but thought i right a blog for beijing so it went on my map!

First things first! The train journey..... Well it turned out to be eventfully to say the least. the first half was to the border drom hanoi which was arround 6 hours.. then up through china for the best part of 35 hours. well the drama took place in the first half... was happlily reading a bit of my book when suddenly a rock smashes through our window about 30cm from my head and hits me on my leg. covering me in shards of glass, luckily i escaped with only a few small cuts on my arm! glad i didnt have any on my face. the rest of the train journey was pretty un eventful. though did get kept up till 3am to pass through chinese immigration before being kicked off for 2hours while carriages got shunted at 6.30 the next day! Rude. However when we got back on nodded straight off to sleep for a few hours.

Anyways arrrived in beijing on thursday arround lunch time..didnt do much really just rested after our train then went exploring... didnt really find much as its a bloody big place! its kinda how i imagine Las Vegas, according to my father's descriptions! anyways got up late friday mornig still recovering from a the poor sleep on the train. and set off again to explore this time we found a lot more. we managed to find the main shopping street and thougt we'd just spend a few hours looking about. then that evening we got a half hour taxi to the main bar area! then we spent the night enjoying beijing's nightlife.

Saturday, first day of our trip... meet up with our group at the 6.30 meeting, everyone seems nice enough. we then went for our first group meal, where we tried beijing duck and various other delightful dishes ordered by our guide. So Sunday first activities day of our trip, and what better way to start a trip in china but a visit to the great wall! i really dont think ill be abe to decribe it in words... just out of this world! ive got some amazing pictures so will let the pics do the talking when i manage to get them loaded up! we then finished the day with another group meal and a kung fu show to wrap the day up. Monday.. our last day in bejing we started early walking across to Tianamen Square the centre of beijing's (and china's for that matter) policical activity! we then entered inside the forbidden city which is not really so forbidden anymore due to the numbers of visitors we saw piling in. however as the place is so huge the crowd inside was as busy but if every area was the same as the areas we went to there was a hell of a lot of people in there! then after we had some free time before catching our train to Xi'an at 7pm..so there was another 14 our journay to savour!

Dave