Day 27

How do you solve a problem like a night that doesn't appear to be going anywhere? You force yourselves and those around you to have fun, of course. And that's just what we did. An executive meeting between the brain-trust led to numerous pathetic (and unopposed) attempts at justifying the cost of a big night out and so we turned what was looking like and early night in to an all-nighter.

The majority of the night was spent in a room downstairs, which played more commercial music, until around 3am, at which point it the DJ must have gone home as he just left the Soulja Boy album on. Intentional or not, this was a master-stroke as flocks of Chinese kids, dressed in baggy valour tracksuits with matching baseball caps, headed for the dance floor and proceeded to line dance their way through the entire album. Remixes. Bonus tracks. Interludes. The lot.

After watching in astonishment we retired to some comfortable sofas. So comfortable were they, in fact that three of us were caught having a little nap. We stayed until the club finished at 5am and then, decided to go straight to Tian'anmen Square to watch the flag raising. Another genius idea and clearly in no way alcohol induced. Anyway, we got a taxi and speculated as to whether we would be the first people there. How wrong we were. I'm fairly certain it wasn't a national holiday in China but there were people as far as the eye could see (and remember, Chinese people are only waist-high on me so there must have been loads of them.) It looked as if all of Beijing had turned up to see the flag raised.

While at the flag raising, we got wind of a rumour that the Bird's Nest stadium was to be opened to the public for the first time since the Olympics and as it was our last day in China we decided to fight sleep deprivation for a few more hours and join the stampede towards the subway.

Jenny and I managed to hustle a good spot in the queue for tickets, while Daley and Nick scampered off to get McDonald's breakfast. When they returned empty handed after 45 minutes I was devastated and didn't want to speak to either of them ever again. However, it later transpired that McDonald's was actually closed and my reaction had been a touch irrational. Once inside the stadium, we had a good look around, took some photos with the mascots and caused security breach by stepping on the track to take a photo as if we were in the starting blocks for the 100 metres.

After the stadium it was back to the hostel to grab something to eat and pack before catching our train to Hanoi. We got directions to Beijing West station from reception (first mistake) and, confident that we had plenty of time, (second mistake) decided to take a bus rather than taxi (third mistake.) As I am sure you can imagine, there are one or two people in China and occasionally their public transport gets a little crowded. All the more fun then when you are on a packed bus with 20 kilos on your back and the driver decides to thrash the bus around like he is re-enacting scenes from Speed.

Roughly half way through the designated stops, the bus began to empty and we realised that it was going in the opposite direction to the station, so we got off at the next stop and hailed a taxi, this time financially incentivising him to drive as if it were a scene from Speed. He did his very best but the traffic was against us. We sprinted through the station with all our kit and arrived at the check-in gate at 16.11. Check-in closed at 16.10. Of course, in China rules are rules, so despite all our protestations there was absolutely no way the little Hitler at the desk was going to let us through.

We were exhausted, devastated and stuck in Beijing for another four days and there was nothing we could do about it. The day ended with us getting a taxi back to The Red Lantern hostel, checking in until Thursday and trying to sleep off the lowest point of our trip so far.