Hello,

We arrived in Beijing after an uneventful flight, we tried to get a taxi to our hostel, which was a challenge considering no one speaks English or understands us!!!! We queued at the taxi rank and the driver looked baffled another came to help and he worked it out but ripped us off big time!!! We were so angry but he oh it's all part of the experience I guess. It won't happen again though!!

We arrived at lunch time and decided to walk to the Olympic centre (it didn't look far on the map!!) we walked for an hour and a half before we got there!!! We didn't even get lost stupid map scales!!! The area of the Olympic park was huge but you couldn't go in any of the buildings but it was worth a visit. Although coming from Thailand it was freezing by the time we had finished looking around. We had our first Chinese meal of Mcdonalds then got the metro back which took about 10mins and was really cheap!!! Definitely should have done this in the first place!!! Not a good start to our China adventure.

The next day we went to Jingshan Park which is the highest and most central point in Beijing, it has a pavilion at the top of the hill with a big Buddha in. The sun was shining so we sat on a bench looking over the forbidden city when some Chinese kids came up and asked us to take a picture of them.........we thought when we said yes they all stood round us and posed apparently we were the stars of the picture and they were so happy!!! We were very confused!!! It later turned out this is quite common and they aren't trying to steal our stuff.

We joined our tour group in the evening which was a relief as the language barrier is hard work and we were feeling a but lost. There are 15 of us in the group a mix of English, Norwegian, German and Danish plus Joy our tour guide. Dan had Beijing duck with the group which is a big thing there and loved it. The next day we went to the Great Wall, we had to climb up 1100 steps to get to the wall. I'm sure I had a heart attack on the way up it was so hard, we made it to tower 10 but the highest point for tourist is tower 14 so off we went the views were amazing and it was well worth it. The best part though was the luge back down. It's just a giant slide with a dodgy brake and hope you don't fall off but so much fun!! We saw a Kung Fu show in the evening which was a bit random and even though it was in English no one really knew what was going on!!

Up early again the next day to go to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City, we weren't allowed to ask questions in the square as the spies were listening and we might get shot!!! After spending the morning at the city we went to a pearl market where you can buy loads of fake goods but the people grab you to buy stuff we didn't really like it so off to Starbucks we went.

We also went to a night food market where you could buy local delicacies which just looked so delicious like starfish, seahorse, penis, live scorpion, balls, snake, worms, pigeon and most enticing of all was the cat and dog!!!, everything was on a stick barbecued we of course embraced this and went to McDonald's (along with everyone else)!!!!

On our last day we went to the Temple of Heaven which was in a nice park, there was a choir singing and people dancing. The temple was nice but similar to the forbidden city. In the afternoon it was time to get the train to Shanghai which took 14 hours!!!!