Ni ha!

Finally found a computer that will let me on this website. China has weird internet policies which only allows you to access so much online.

Anyway! Flew into beijing on the 16th - nightmare trying to find the hostel at 11pm at night. It was a lovely place, a little courtyard enclosed with couches and tables and rooms leading off for sleeping. Unfortunately this little jem of a hostel was in the middle of a "hutong" which are the crammed houses they all stay in with little alleyways connecting them all together - very scary so late at night. Beijing was amazing though - the city itself is the size of belgium, even the subway stations are about 40mins walk from each other. Lots of pollution and high rise flats - mega over populated! We walked round lots of parks and temples, saw the forbidden city and took a day trip out to the ming tombs and of course the great wall. The wall was awesome, sitting in a bus for 4 hours with the tourguide talking in chinese all the time wasnt so great!

No one speaks enough english to have a conversation. Receptions of hostels have been a god send because they can usually manage to write in chinese characters the questions we need to ask people that day. The phrasebook has been a god send!

From beijing we took the train to Jinan, was scammed by a taxi as they took us to 3 different hotels, none of them ours. Finally got a nice place to stay that night that turned out to be complete luxury! Jinan was a grubby big city with not much to see so the next day we got the train to Qingdao - a sea side town with a groovy hostel and amazing food market. Again its really overpopulated so the beach was rammed and at 18 degrees we didnt stay very long!

From Qingdao we took a local bus 4 hours south to reach the nearest train station that connects to xian. That little train station was in a town called langyungang and we were the centre of attraction! Slightly off the tourist track i doubt they had ever seen blonde hair and someone kezzs size before! They were very friendly though and all the kids wanted their photo taken with us!

That station got us on the overnight train to xi'an - a 15 hour journey east to central china. The sleeper was very comfy and great watching the countryside go by - smoking and spitting chinese men made it a little gross!

xi'an was brilliant - we went out to the terracotta warriors, an army built from clay to defend the first ming emperor in his death (the same guy that built the wall) that was 2000 years ago and they still stand their - all 8000 of them. They think theres more but excavation is really slow for some reason.

In xian we befriended a welshman and an english couple so spent a few days with them, looking at temples, drinking and we even cycled round the top of the wall that surrounds the city - that was a good laugh.

Yesterday we sadly left xian behind - definetly the best place so far. An overnight train took us back east to nanjing - a city just beside shanghai - its pants but its only a stop over as the day after tommorow we hope to sail down the yangzi river to shanghai (although no one here has any idea about a boat - the chinese really are useless at times!)

So its been challenging, dirty, fun, tiring, smelly and downright weird! The food various from amazing to disgusting. Kezz had a really nice sweet and sour chicken one day only to find a claw in it! You can buy almost any part of any animal which makes supermarkets more like a horror show for us! Dont worry - plenty of photos taken!

Off for now - hope everyone back home is well. Keep the messages coming, its great to hear how you are all doing.

Love kezz and mo x x x