Day 23

Today we booked our train tickets to Hanoi, leaving on Thursday. The journey is forty hours long. I'll be honest with you, I'm not exactly thrilled by the prospect.

Trying to book tickets to another country when both you and the person you are dealing can only say 'hello' in each other's native languages is difficult enough, what makes the whole ordeal worse is the presence of almost the entire office staff coming over to see what the crazy Westerners are up to and then leaving, laughing their heads off. It's very difficult to hand over a large sum of money to someone who is unashamedly laughing in your face.

After that, we jumped back on the subway and headed for Tian'anmen Square, so that we could see the Forbidden City. Unusually for Beijing it was a perfect day, without a single cloud in the sky, so the Forbidden City looked almost super-imposed. The City itself is hugely impressive and recently I have found myself becoming increasingly keen on visiting historical places of interest, such as this, and trying to imagine what life must have been like there when it was in use. Unfortunately, unless you want to fork out for a tour guide or a headset, which would see you spend a whole day in the City, there really isn't much information for the DIY tourist. Add to that the fact that all of the buildings look identical and you can find yourself breezing through in a couple of hours. And in all honesty, that's about all the time you need.

At the far end of the City, just outside the walls, is Jingshan Hill, a park in which you can walk to the top and enjoy panoramic views of Beijing, old and new. After scaling the hill we walked back through the City towards the main entrance tower that faces Tian'anmen Square, where Mao gave his speeches, stopping occasionally for photo requests with locals. Again, there isn't a huge amount of information up there but you do get a fantastic view of the square, and once more my mind began to wander as I wondered what it must have been like to stand up there and watch those tanks and rocket launchers roll by.

In the evening we went back to the Silk Road market to run the gauntlet once more and haggle furiously over goods that we neither wanted nor needed, but still bought because they were a "good price." A lesson was sorely learnt here. At the jeans stalls they have all the branded denim on show but as they bag it up they slip you a fake pair in and as everything is so frantic you forget to check. So, when I got home and tried them on to find that they had been stitched so loosely that moments later I only had the waistband in my hands and the rest of the trousers around my ankles, I was understandably none too pleased and wanted to track down Christina Aguillera and Sophia Loren, the sales girls that had sold me the faulty goods. But what could I do? There's no Customers Services Department, and even if there was, I had no receipt and they would plead ignorance anyway. Gutted.