Hello, Hello!!

Last day in Beijing - flying out to Sydney tonight and then an internal flight up to Brisbane (13.5 hours flying time - aaaargh!!)

Spent the last 2 nights at Sheraton (thanks to Alex and his staff rates!) - very luxurious and huge! It's in a completely different area to our other 1 (it's in the foreign embassy area - so lots of western people about), not near touristy things which was fine as we had done them all, but lots of nice restaurants with english menus and veggi things for me! I was wasting away at our other hotel, it was close to all the tourist things but it was very "local beijing" so all restaurants menus were in chinese and no veggie things!

We had a lovely Thai meal on Monday and last night we had an Indonesian/Myanmar meal which was lovely too - curries with rice and samosas/pakora etc - u get so much for so cheap - made up for the light meals we had at the beginning!!

Yesterday, we went to our last touristy thing -the "Lama Temple" (tube station was closed so had to go to next one and walk all the way back - not impressed in 37 degree heat!!). Lama Temple was lovely - Tibetan budhist temple and we saw a few Tibetan monks too! Had big burning pots where people lit incense and did a ritual and placed it in the pot.

Was a huge 24 metre budha statute which was painted in vibrant colours and gold - all chinese people prayed to the budha on their knees - we were the only 1s not doing a ritual or praying!!

Ok - next blog will be from Brisbane and we have not been able to add our photos whilst in Beijing as the computer instructions are all in Chinese but hopefully we will have it sussed for Brisbane!