Last day in Beijing today. We took a walk to the Temple of Heaven which is set in a lovely garden. Th temple is where the emperors prayed for good harvests. The main building is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests which is 38m high and is made from all wood with no nails or cement which is a pretty nifty piece of engineering. It was relatively quite around the temple (for china at least) and was nice for an outing. We saw lots of people dancing in the park and a...

Up early in the morning for a tour to where else but THE GREAT WALL we went to the Mutianyu section of the wall which is 90km NE of Beijing. When we arrived and were walking up to the cable car (well we couldnt be bothered walking up the very steep hill) we ran into a gaggle of very pretty ladies and one of the chaps on the tour remarked jokingly "is there a beauty contest in town" not realising it was all of the contestants from Miss World! we kid you not it sou...

Today we went to the Forbidden City which is forbidden because for 500 years the scuzzy public were not allowed in and if you went in uninvited you had your head chopped off. Nowadays you dont need an invite any waifs or strays can go in (well if you pay anyway). We went in through the North gate which we were pretty pleased about as we strolled right in where as if you went in from the south you had to queue for hours so we were chuffed with ourselves from the o...

Flew from Shanghai to Beijing today just a short flight (about 2 hours). Arrived at our hotel which is a courtyard hotel in an old building down a small alleyway. Mark made friends with the pet turtle which he has called Jimmy and now wants one for a pet (oh how quickly Sid has been forgotten). We have just been out for Peking duck; well why not eh!Are planning a monster day of sight seeing tomorrow (which probably will get shorter and shorter depending on how b...

Today we ventured off to the Expo, well seen as it is in Shanghai and we are in Shanghai it would be rude not to really. The Expo is were lots of countries put on a big show and build pavillions to show off their countries, it is the third largest event in the world after the olympics and the world cup, so after imaganing how important it is and how many people are in Shanghai and it being a Saturday and it being a National Holiday week you can imagine that there...