The first stop on our tour of China was Beijing. Knowing that the Olympics had been held there, Jack and I both expected the locals to be much more used to Westeners than they were. From the moment we stepped off of the plane we felt that we had a bit of an alien presence in Beijing as many of the people we passed seemed shocked to see us or gawped in utter amazement! Not being used to this kind of reception we both felt a little bit out of our comfort zone, especially me as we all know that it takes a lot to phaze Jack! There were very few westeners anywhere in Beijing, even in the crowded tourist areas such as the Forbidden city (see picture above). Such areas were mainly populated by Chinese tourists who often visit areas of mainland China as its so incredibly big! The culture shock was huge to start with especially as one of the first things we saw when we left the airport was a child on a skateboard with no legs who was pushing himself along with his hands, and another child who was being held by his mother, who seemed to be blind and had some kind of swelling around the brain. Wallking through a local market we were pestered to buy kebab sticks filled with spiders/sea horses and scorpions, YUM, haha! We did not try any of those things, instead chosing the safer option of taking pictures! I have to admit we did have a Mac'ds on our first say in Beijing as this was before the tour had started and no one seemed to speak English! For all those people who love a maccy d's you will be suprised to find out that a meal each for Jack and I came to the grand total of 2.80, bargain!!

After meetin our tour group which is made up of 15 people of mixed ages, we went for a traditional Peking Duck dinner which was lovely. Our first trip as a group was to the Great Wall of China...this was fantastic! It is every bit as collossal as you would expect and to imagine it being built is beyond belief. Climbing one section of the wall was a challenge, there were so many steps and it was a boiling hot day, nethertheless it was definitely worth the pain! My little legs struggled with the massive steps, while Jack's long limbs and flip flops found the tiny ones a challenge! Coming the down the wall we were presented with two options. A) to take the cable car down as we had done going up OR B) toboggan down on a long windy slide! Jack jumped at option B) straight away whereas I was obviously towards the first one! However, after a bit of peer pressure from other members of the group I went for the toboggan run and I am so glad I did! I had agreed to this on the proimise of one thing from Jack..that he wouldn't zoom off and leave me to get stuck! Jack must have missheard as he was gone as soon as he sat on the little wooden seat ;) With the wind in my hair and a killer view, I was happy that I had decided to take the plunge and go for the toboggan so I've decided to try more new things during this trip (with a bit of pushing from Jack too!) We were both shocked to see that at the bottom of the wall there was subway, as in the fast food restaurant! A BLT sub later and we were good to go!

In the written version of my diary there are pages of info on what we have been up to but as time on computers is limited I'm going to try and pick out the highlights! So for the rest of Beijing we also visited the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square where we were asked for pictures with Chinese tourists and were watched by the many policeman patrolling the busy area where Chairman Mao's body is kept in an underound refirigeration unit and brought up for tourists to shuffle past and catch a brief view every day. Our tour guide, Dodo, told us some juicy stories about concubines and emeperors with many women, it was all very juicy stuff as her eyes lit up with excitment whilst she divulged details!

After several days in Beijing we had to take our first overnight train to Shanghai...an experience we were to repeat 3 more times during our stay in China!