Monday 1st September. We say bye to kathrine and Regina - they are also checking out today and grab a take out from the Chinese from last night for the journey today. We check the train station as there's 5 in bejing and it's the closest one which is good. We get to the train station with lots of spare time so book our datong - xi'an, xi'an to chengdu sleeper trains. We find the platform and stuff easily and take he 6 hour - hard seat train to datong. It's unco...

Sunday 31st August - day 11 Beijing Day is spend doing absolutely nothing apart from hanging out in the room with Regina and itay and eating a lot of dumplings. Our laziness is enforced by the fact it's absolutely pissing down. We go to a local Chinese place around the corner, order from the Chinese menu (with no pictures - thanks to itay teaching yas some of the Chinese symbols) - the portion is huge and I share my meal leftovers with yas and Regina when I ge...

Saturday 30th - day 10 We take the metro up to the summer palace today and spend around 3 hours walking through the grounds. The palace was considered an imperial retreat where the emperor would come when they wanted to escape Beijing. The garden is vast and full of temples and pavillions which climb up a hill in the centre of the park. we walk through suzhou street which has a main canal and lots of overpriced shops. we head to the main temples - and even get t...

Friday 29th - day 9 After the hectic few days we decide to just to to the temple of heaven today. we stop at Beijing train station first and book our datong tickets quite easily for Monday (Sunday was sold out) so we will have to extend our stay in Beijing a day, which isn't so bad seeing as we are going out Saturday. The temple of heaven is located in large gardens and has the temple at the north end - which leads down to a smaller temple and the sacrifice cir...

Thursday 28th - day 8 Beijing We get up for the tour at 6am and have an 'American breakfast' from the hostel - which was included in the price. The breakfast is unfortunately not as impressive as t sounds. The sausage is minuscule, there's 2 spoonfuls of scrambled egg, 1 rasher of bacon and 3 triangles of toast with jam - but we both eat the lot. We get the bus at 7.40 and have a few pick ups on the way. It takes about 2 hours to arrive, the tour guide attemp...