Hello All,

Well we are leaving Beijing tonight on the overnight train to Datong. We have had an awesome time here wandering around and seeing the sights. We have been to Tiananemen Square and seen the lowering of the flag at sunset and been up Tianenmen Gate (gate of Heavenly peace) for a birds eye view over the square, seen the Forbidden City along with half of the rest of China, eaten Moon cakes for the Chinese Moon day or Harvest fesitval, seen the Summer Palace, Checked out the skewered scorpions and seahorses :-( at Wangfujing snack street, chilled out with the locals at Houhai lake, been to the emperors summer palace, seen the water cube and Birds nest and been ripped off by a few dodgy taxi drivers along the way!

Not to mention the Awesome 4 hour hike along the great wall from Jinshanling to Simatai - definitely our highlight. Liz did very well not getting too scared at the sheer drops that we had to walk past, but in a country of 1.3 billion people we were the only people walking along that section of the wall that day which was amazing especially considering it was a public holiday weekend.

Our other highlights included the evening performances of the Beijing Acrobatics Troupe (we have no idea how one very small 15 year old girl can keep herself in a one handed handstand on top of a pillar and do the splits at the same time - Amazing)and a performance from the Shaolin Monks Kung Fu squad - we also don't know how one monk was laying on a bed of knives with a bed of nails on top of him and another monk on top of that, didn't get sliced into about 5 pieces when they smashed a slab of concerte with a sledgehammer on the top monks stomach - OH MY GOD!!!

Beijing has been very cool and has kind of got us acclimatised to the crazy Chinese way of life, and we are looking forward to the next chapter of the trip. We will add photos very soon, All our love

Liz & Ian xxxxx