Got up early and walked to Tian'amen Square to visit Mao. That took all of 3 minutes and then we headed up to the Forbidden City which I had never realised was so close by! We went in and decided to find a guide to show us around - I had been before and it's so vast and there's so little information available that we thought it would be the best way to find out what it was all about. We found a lovely lady called Lulu and haggled her down to 100 yuan for an ho...

Moved hostels first thing this morning to Leo's after telling Wangfujing Youth Hostel how unimpressed we were with their lack of customer service - twice we had waited for someone to help us with the Tibet booking and they never turned up. We decided to head out to the Summer Palace and were told that the best thing to do was to get the bus from Qianmen. We waited for 20 minutes for a bus and then stood on the bus in traffic queues for 2 hours before we got the...

Went on a mission to find a Tibet Tour today with a company which would then take us through the Friendship Highway into Nepal. Firstly we started with the CITS - they priced us up a trip which came to much more than we'd anticipated. It seems if you are to go to Tibet the government puts so many restrictions down that it becomes a costly exercise. You have to pay for permits to visit the area, a guide to show you around and you must stay in 3* hotels. In add...

Arrived in Beijing at 7:00 this morning and headed straight to Wangfujing Youth Hostel. They didn't have any availablity but said that if we tried again at 12:00 they would probably have people checking out. Had a coffee then headed for the Indian Visa centre in Dongzhimen. It was reasonably easy to find and they gave me the forms to fill in which I did. They then told me I had to write down my reasons for applying so long before I was going - I thought I had...

Got up and got a taxi to the museum marking the spot of the home of the Communist Party for a period of time during the second world war. It was a little unexciting but luckily not too big and we were able to get round it fairly quickly! Went for lunch in a typical chinese backstreet restaurant and then got a taxi down to the South wall. Hired bicycles for an hour and cycled the entire circuit of the wall at great speed as we had to get back, pick up our stuff...