Star attraction This morning we met the group at 7.30am (!) to go to the Forbidden City. Susan said this was best; because it's Golden Week there was the chance that half of China would be there too. The Forbidden City, or the 'Working People's Cultural Palace' as the Chinese like to call it (nowhere is it referred to as the 'Forbidden City') is to the North of Tiananmen Square (which, according to Susan is the site of the '1989 accident.' I'll say no more). Al...

A pleasant stroll We drove to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall this morning and set off on our 4/5 hour walk. The Great Wall is split into various sections; the most popular with tourists is called Badaling. We went to Jinshanling and Simatai which are less visited. NOT surprising - it damned near killed us, well, me anyway. The wall consists of new and original parts and the original (un-renovated) parts were pretty hair-raising. At times there were n...

Ni Hao China! We arrived in Beijing at around 2.30pm yesterday and exited the station, which was absolute bedlam. We negotiated a taxi ride to the hotel. Again, taxis were trying to charge about 5 times more than they should but we managed to negotiate down to double the price it should have cost. Today we had a look out into Beijing. The streets are clean and the pollution isn't half as bad as we'd anticipated; I guess it's far worse in the summer heat. The ...

Again, just a short one to say we're now in China. Will hopefully update site with Mongolia stuff in the next couple of days.