Ok I'm a few days behind. Beijing has been crazy! My wallet was not with Harvey and Sudestra :(

It was too late to do anything that evening so we went out for some food, me, Jess, Greg and two American guys he'd met on the wall called David and Jorge. We went to the Muslim restaurant and had good food and cheap beer then we went back to the hostel and played cards. Steve joined us and we played a great game called Kings (and another called Ride the Bus). It ended up being quite a late night...

The next morning I woke up early and went to report my purse missing. After some confusion the hotel desk called the police but nothing had been handed in. A woman walked me to my bank to see if I could get any money but I couldn't :( I went back to the hotel to try to work out what to do next.

Jess was my saviour and over buffet breakfast offered to help me out if I could give the money back to her. I sent a long email to mum trying to explain why I needed her to put £400 into some random Austrailian bank account!

We then went as a group (me, Jess, Greg and Steve) to the Summer Palace. It was so amazing and not too cold! We explored and everyone else braved walking on the ice!

On the way back to the hostel we decided to check out some restaurants because we wanted to go for Peking Duck later.

We arrived back at the hotel a little late and met Jorge and David. We deicded to have another hour before we had to go out and re-convened at 8pm. I also spoke with mum and got Jess's account details to transfer the money, dad was in the bank at the time, yay for technology!

Me, Jess, Steve, Greg, Jorge, David and a new Swedish guy called John went looking for Peking Duck. We had decided to go for an expensive meal but the restaurant was closed! So we found another cheaper duck restaurant that was pretty good! We ordered one duck, one chicken and an array of vegetables between us. The food was fantastic! Highlights of the meal included David eating the entire chicken head and John attempting to buy different types of alcohol (1 baijiu, 1 tea, 1 juice...)

After the meal, Steve left because he had to walk the great wall the next day and the rest of us went to find a nightclub. After some false starts and donating leftover beer to a homeless guy, we went to a club called Tang, which in hindsight was probably a gay bar. Regardless it was a lot of fun. It was expensive but it was very fancy and the dancers were very cool. It was a late night that got a bit crazy when everyone ordered a bottle of whiskey at about 3am...

Jorge wasn't too well and both him and John fell properly asleep in the taxi home. When we got out of the taxis, one of the drivers wouldn't take any money. After 4 refused notes, Jess got frustrated and tried to grab one back but it ripped. She had one half, the taxi driver had one half and he rang the police... I left Greg and Jess to deal with it and tried to help everyone else back home. Once they'd found their way I lef them because I saw Jess standing on her own. Greg had made her leave but was now on his own, surrounded by what looked like a scary sea of policemen. Me and Jess tried to move forward and a policeman came to us who seemed quite sympathetic. We rejoined Greg and I gave hime another 50RMB which he finally accepted and we took our change and we were able to leave. The driver had ripped up one 100RMB, two 50RMB and we'd lost another 100RMB "somewhere".

We bought some more beer on the way back but it never got drunk. We met David and John back at the hostel. Jorge had disappeared back to the road. He's been to the bank and got another 100RMB and tried to give it to the taxi driver, but every time he tried the police gave it back to him. After a while he gave up and came back.

We had a bit of a chat reflecting on the night and then went to bed about 5am. Steve was glad he adn't joined us, he had to be up at 6am!

The next day we were up very late and missed breakfast. We all met in the restaurant and had some lunch and took it easy. We went for a walk around the hostel but nothing was open. Me and Jess also bought our tickets to Xi'an and did some washing. David and Jorge tried out a basketball game and won some cute little teddies! We then bought some sparklers and waved them around a bit before going back to the hostel.

We were an hour early for the New Years Eve party so just relaxed with David and Jorge in the bar before they had to leave. At about 6pm we said our goodbyes just as the party started.

The party was very cool and very Chinese. We all got to make dumplings and eat lots of snacks. There were a lot of speeches, some very (very) bad singing and our tickets were a raffle! All four of us won something, the boys got hanging masks and me and Jess got pillow cases. We also (except for Greg) won a free night in the hotel between 01/11/09 and 21/13/09, very useful...

At the end of the party we went outside to watch the fireworks, it was a pretty scary experience! It was very cool though and we had some more sparklers. After the fireworks finished it was still quite early so we went to play cards in the room for a while. At about 10:30pm Steve's friend Andrew and his mate Nate arrived. We had a chat and then went out about 11pm. We had also acquited John and an English man called Andy. We managed to talk our way onto the roof and it was amazing! We could see all over the city and there were explosions everywhere! We then walked into town heading for Tianamen square. We made it at about midnight but it was closed off and nothing was happening. As we started to walk back towards the hostel the whole sky lit up and it was so loud! We guessed new year had arrived! We ran around shouting "Xīn Nián Kuài Lè!" to everyone and nearly got blown up a few times!

After about an hour we started to get cold so we took the party back to the hostel. We were joined by a German guy called Henric, a Russian girl called Gallia and a very strange Finnish girl for another (very slow) game of Kings and then just chatting to about 4:30am.

New year's morning we managed to catch breakfast! We pigged out on the buffet and then me, Jess, Steve and Greg decided to head to the Lama Temple. We walked down the street that was being set up before on the way to the subway station and it was packed! There were people everywhere carrying bright things on sticks and wearing silly hats. Jess bought a flower on a stick which was lucky because she is difficult to see, her hair colour blends in.

We finally made it to the subway and caught the train to the Lama Temple. The temple station was closed so we got off a stop before and walked down the frozen river towards the temple. When we made it to the temple we couldn't get in and the road was closed. We were pointed down another road and started to follow people carrying incense. We walked for aaaaages through the Hutongs and we weren't really sure where we were going. Eventually we made it to the entrance and we had 30 minutes until it closed. We got our tickets through the mad crush and walked through the temple. It was SO busy! But very exxciting. Everyone was burning incense and the others joined in. We shuffled our way through the temple, taking lots of pictures, and we saw a record breaking Buddha statue at the end made from one piece of wood. We then made our way back to the hostel and had a rest before we met up for the evening.

We caught up with Andrew, Nate and John about 8pm and went to the night food market. It was very organised, not like any night market I've ever seen, but it did some very strange food! I had veggie dumplings and some egg and chips thing but the others were more adventurous (and less vegetarian). Between them they tried dog, snake, shrimp, scorpion, bug, silkworm and another "snake" which quickly got less popular once the guy selling it started shouting "penis" and pointing to it. After the food we wandered around a little but, used the last sparklers and then went back to the hostel.

We had our last night's party back at the hotel, me, Jess, Greg, Steve, Andrew, Nate, John, english Andy, Henric and a new American who was teaching in Kyrgyzstan. We played two games of Kings but by the second one peoples attention had waned, most likely from the baijiu which had also made it into the king's cup.

At 3am I called it a night because we had to check out the next morning and we were meeting at 10am to go and see Mao.