Well, we arrived in Beijing at 6am this morning and to be honest - we had a pretty rude welcome! The sky was dark and it was pissing down.Antony and I stumbled to a taxi rank and when we arrived at our hotel the cab driver charged us 5x what it said in the guide book and since we had 'chump' written all over our faces we coughed up the cash.

After a multi-hour nap, we headed out into the city to get our bearings.Two Chinese students befriended us and walked with us to Tian'anmen Square chatting away. They took us on a detour and into an art gallery filled with sub-standard paintings, claiming that they had painted them and were trying to sell them. We declined and walked away.Shortly after, we sat down and I noticed that both zippers on my backpack were unzipped and I knew that we had been had!Luckily, those two had no idea how inept I am in packing a bag and my wallet was at the bottom and therefore untouched.A free lesson I guess!

After walking many miles (I mean this place is freakin' huge!) with our mouths catching flies, we had a Peking duck dinner with some food that was a total mystery to us and headed back to the hotel for some well deserved shut eye.

Culture shock is about 8.5/10 for me (Antony says that it is only 5/10 for him) but I'll be ready for day 2.Hey ho - it's better than Jarrow!

Rachelle x