Aternoon all, been a fairly quiet day here coz we're leaving Beijing this evening and had to pack this morning. Just been for a bit of a stroll in the park behind the Forbidden City. There's a hill that we walked up where we could look down and right across the Forbidden City, or at least we could have done but today is really smoggy so the visability is terrible. We sat for a while writing postcards and diaries etc and Chinese people kept coming up to look at us writing in English! One guy just come and sat right between me (Steve) & Jules so his friend could take a picture of him with some westerners! All in all a bit of a quiet one but nice to just chill and not spend all day walking for a change.

Saw a few weird sights today too. Well, we see weird sights everyday but usually have so much other stuff to say that we don't tend to report them. Walking back to the hostel earlier we saw a guy in his shirt & tie roller blading to work then passed another guy walking down the street in pijamas & slippers. Since this is clearly acceptable i am now going to be spending my days in a similar attire! Oh and we also saw an old lady in the park doing keepy ups with a springy feather thing, people here seem to love exercise no matter how old they are! So thats about all for the moment; getting the train to Xian later; 14 hours so will hopefully get some sleep ready to see the Terracotta Warriors tomorrow.

Keep the messages coming in, good to hear from peeps back home. peace & love x x x