"Cell phone translators are amazing!" One morning while eating breakfast at a local restaurant, (Not the cozy small ones in the back alleys, but one slightly more expensive, on one of the main streets) they tried to trick us with the bill. They did of course not speak English, and we tried to solve the dispute. As we were doing this, they started cleaning the table, and everyone got very upset. We paid what was more than reasonable and got out of th...

"The Great Wall of China" As US President Nixon said as he visited The Great Wall of China in 1972 during the Ping-Pong diplomacy conference. "It reallyis a great wall." I thought this comment was quite inadequate before I went there myself. With all the branches of the Wall, they have figured out that it is 8,851.8 km (5,500.3 miles). The sight when you are up there is just not possible to describe it. And in Nixon's defence, millions o...

"1644 to 1911..." The Forbidden City lies in the city center of Beijing. It covers 720 000 m2, and was built during the Ming Dynasty. The complex served as the Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing dynasty, and is now to find on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The construction of this gigantic palace city, of about 1000 buildings (980 are still remaining), took only 15 years. Over one million workers were needed to complete the city, which were built...

"A five hour border crossing" After the attack the previous night I spent a lot of time to catch up on my writing. My train for Beijing was leaving early in the morning, and I wanted to sleep a lot on the train. I slept about one and a half hour before the manager of the hostel woke me up. She of course wanted to hear the whole story while I got dressed, packed and ready to leave for the train station. Ulaanbaatar is known for this kind of attacks,...

"Peking Duck" After a lot of time on the train, eating noodles and bread, we decided to feast on Peking duck when we had dropped off our bags at the hostel. This turned out to be a little more time demanding than we had prepared for. With the Swedes switching on carrying by backpack, we went to a hostel we had looked up on the Internet. We realized quite fast, after getting away from the enormous and extremely crowded Beijing Central Railway stat...