Getting to Beijing required two flights with China Southern Airways with only 25 minutes transit time in a Chinese airport between, in which we were labelled and had to scuttle round the airport through scary immigration, passport control, customs, bag scanning and infection & quarantine in record time!

When we finally arrived in Beijing, wearing flipflops and shorts we were greeted by an icy blast of wind. Beijing had experienced a dramatic change of weather with the temperature nose-diving from 31 to 13 in 24 hours! Coming from 36 degree Hanoi it was a massive shock to see our breath in the cold air! Thankfully since then it seems to have stabilised at a more comfortable 20!

Getting off the shuttle bus in central Beijing we headed off with a taxi driver to what we thought was a taxi but which turned out to be a tiny enclosed tuk tuk that looked like a glorified eggbox. Our concerns that we and our bags would not fit were dismissed in rapid Mandarin and we (and our rucksacks) were wedged into the eggbox that we could not even turn our heads to see where we were going!

The hostel turned out to be a nice chilled place that plays swing and jazz 24 hours a day, is lit by candles in the evening and has a resident cat that miaows loudly in Chinese.

We had a few days to explore before our tour in China started so we headed out to the Temple of Heaven, one of China's most treasured monuments. Set in a gorgeous park it was full of elderly Chinese people singing opera and dancing with flags, practising Tai Chi, playing cards, running backwards and pretending to be rythmic gymnasts complete with long swirly thing (see the photo). There was also what appeared to be the entire school population of China, all dressed in matching tracksuits and haircuts and laughing and pointing at us! This has been a common occurence, people blatantly staring...Kim now responds with a massive beaming grin to see if they smile back or scuttle off embarrassed!

We walked about 2 miles to visit the Birds Nest Olympic Stadium which was impressive but sadly we couldn't get that close to it. People were staring at us, as the only westerners, almost as much as the stadium and one family gripped Kim in a vice-like grip to ensure she posed for a photo with them! We also visited the Lama Temple, where Kim nearly got told off by a big scary-looking monk for taking photos of monks chanting (she got some sneaky ones anyway!)

Food so far has been really tasty (apart from the scorpions, silk worms, centipedes and pigs intestines sold on the streets on skewers!). We have developed a taste for spicy lamb skewers (yes LAMB not scorpion) and are recognised by the local stall-holder. We no longer have to struggle to communicate our desires. We appear and she holds out 4 lamb skewers for us without a word...sorted!

Kim did get suckered into buying a hand made sugar mouse for an extravagant 2 quid....a passing Chinese couple told us helpfully that we had been overcharged by 50%...hmm think we were better off not knowing! To make matters worse she didn't really want to eat it as to make it the man had blown into it (like glass blowing) and shaped it with his hands. After about an hour carrying it around she had just decided to eat it anyway when the mouse fell off its sugar perch and shattered into a thousand pieces, much to Mark's amusement.

So far Beijing has been a bit of a surprise...it is a massive culture shock in many ways but then in some respects seems so westernised with trendy fashion, big department stores selling luxury items and MacDonalds everywhere. We are now looking forward to our tour which should hopefully show us beneath the surface!