An uneventful 6 hour flight from KL saw us land at Beijing around 0600, clear immigration without incident and arrive at the Days Inn hotel, just 15 minutes' walk from Tiananmen Square, around 0700.My God is the smog here bad or what?

Our room was thankfully ready as we were a little pooped and although it was okay, the horizontal slit window made the room look like a Hobit Hole so we dug into our pockets again and stumped up the 100RMB (£10) to upgrade to a lighter, more airy room upstairs.We're glad we did!

Now Maria has been to Beijing before so she was keen to take me to the market that's famous the world over for selling fake goods, indistinguishable from their genuine brethren, at rock bottom prices so we hailed a taxi, who refused to use the meter, and headed to the Silk Market.It was not what Maria remembered when we got there as she had recollections of lots and lots of street stalls but here we were outside a multi-storey building without a street vendor in sight.

We stepped inside and were immediately immersed in chaos, as the rows and rows of stall staff grabbed unwitting tourists, hauled them to their shop and tried to sell them everything under the sun; clothes; luggage; leather goods; silk goods; designer bags; toys; souvenirs; shoes; bedding; handmade suits/ shirts; watches; electronics; binoculars; rifle scopes.You name it, they had it, all the top brands, complete with exactly duplicated logos, labels and tags!What a shopping paradise this was and Maria was right that we should dump our old and worn out gear here for some cheap imitations that would see us through the rest of the trip.

We had a good look round, being man-handled into numerous shops on the way by girls calling us friend and asking 'War you lookin faw?'.There was quite a lot that we needed but our immediate priority was shopping for Mongolia and finding synthetic fabric tops for me that were lightweight and easy to clean and dry.Dryflo fabric or similar was ideal.We also needed pants for the desert.

We found a lovely girl in a stall who had just what we were looking for and after derobing in public, but behind some strategically placed shirts to hide our modesty, we decided on 2-pairs of North Face/ Jack Wolfskin pants, an Arc'Teryx waterproof and shirt and stood eagerly awaiting the rock-bottom price she was sure to give us.We were genuinely shocked when she showed us the calculator displaying 1950RMB (£195)!!No way, we thought, especially since we knew the clothes were fake!!The girl insisted that the pants were genuine and so the price was fair!We have to say that they did look real and were complete with YKK zips and all the right looking tags, but you just couldn't be sure!

We offered 500RMB and, after some stiff haggling, got it all for 650RMB (£65).We know we still paid too much but walked away happy and with a promise to return in July.In fact, we took several business cards containing the vital stall reference number, without which it would be totally impossible to find the same 'shops' again as there are just so many of them and they all look alike anyway.There would also be no guarantee that an 'I remembaaa you' would work as they all use that ploy to attract customers!

We found a pair of linen trousers for Maria then managed to get a taxi back to the hotel (on the meter) but only because a traffic official flagged it down for us and told him to be fair.Clearly unimpressed with the lost opportunity to rip-off the tourist, the driver muttered something out of his window to the official as he drove off which we took to mean 'why the hell did you tell them I'd use the meter'!Taxis charge by distance here (allegedly) so despite the incredible waiting time in the sea of cars churning out more pollution than a coal-fired power station, the fare was stuck on 10RMB for most of the journey.It finally settled on 18RMB which just confirmed our observation that the 50RMB the drivers request is an outrage, and the 30RMB we settled for is still a massive rip-off, albeit it's 'only' £1.20 too much!

During the day we also noticed that there is no sky or sun in Beijing and this was further reinforced during the overly-long taxi-rides.Sure, there's a ceiling above this massive city, but it's a dull, lacklustre, polluted grey one with the colour vibrancy of a piece of charcoal on the dark side of the moon!

For dinner, we decided to walk the 10-15 minutes or so from our hotel to the Oriental Plaza and the Lonely Planet recommended Ajisen Noodle restaurant.We found it in the basement of the mall, grabbed a table and looked at the pictures in the menu for an idea of what to eat.We chose, and were surprised when the waitress presented us with a bill even before our food arrived so, somewhat perturbed, we turned to the next table filled with Chinese 'youngsters' for a steer.They reassured us that it was normal to get the cheque first so we paid up then slurped our delicious noodles contentedly!