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Ni Ho Ma, welcome to Beijing. From the moment we got off the plane, we felt like we were being watched, they have security camera's everywhere! The flight from prague via frankfurt was good, we had an Airbus A380 which was very nice inside and was such a smooth flight Tania didnt realise we had taken off!!
From the airport we took a cab straight to the hotel and had a nap as we couldn't sleep on the plane again. 5 hours later we woke up after sleeping too long and went for dinner, Chinese down the road from the hotel. Now being in China we were expecting the food to be nice, but it wasn't the best and we have not experienced good Chinese food yet, they cook with a lot of salt/msg and just doesn't taste right.
Early start the next day for Our 1st tour; great wall of china and the Ming tombs. They also had stops at the government owned Jade and silk factories. It seems that all tour companies must visit two government factories for every tour, and it seems there are only handful of tour companies. It seems that the government really does take communism to the Nth degree. The Great Wall was amazing, cold but amazing. It was lucky we went in winter as in summer it is packed and also very foggy and you cannot see as far as we did. It was a little weird though catching a toboggan up to the 4th tower but we got to walk the rest of the way up to the 8th tower 888m above sea level.
The Ming tombs were interesting as well, much like the temples and tombs in Vietnam just much much larger.
The second day we toured Tianamen square, forbidden city, summer palace and the temple of heaven. We also had the customary government owned pearl factory and tea house. The forbidden city was massive it stretched for 940 metere and had over 8000 rooms for the emperor. It would take around 27 years for the emperor to sleep in each room once. Another good day, again very cold but nothing like what we are about to experience in Harbin tomorrow!!
We took a walk down food street as well, and the Chinese will eat anything. They have live scorpions, spiders, bats, shark, snake, silk worm, octopus, star fish and crickets all ready to BBQ on a skewer lined up for the locals and tourists. The place was packed, but still working myself up to munch down on a few scorpions.
Will be back here for one day after harbin and will take a look at the shopping and see what we can find.
Off to Harbin tomorrow morning for the ice festival.
Love you all
Scotty and Tania
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