Beijing
28 Sep - 1 Oct

"
Dear Sir,

You are suspected to be infected with H1N1 virus. As per China law, we will take a blood sample and a mouth swab and send them to the laboratory. While you wait for the results you will stay in quarantine in our hospital - the results will take 1-3 days. If the results are negative then you will be free to leave, if they are positive then you will be moved to the Serious Disease Unit.

Kind regards,
Chinese Government
"

That was the news I received after being carted off to hospital directly from Beijing airport. I of course kept saying that I had a "Delhi Belly," but for some reason they could not understand the London slang!! I was distraught - thinking I would miss the 1st few days of my trip, which included the Forbidden City and the Great Wall and at worst being shipped back to the UK! Luckily I got my results the next afternoon and I was FREE!! The first person I saw in China without a face mask was the taxi driver outside the hospital!! Hahaha!!

My time here was packed with sightseeing led by our fantastic leader, Dragon (what a name!) and his 'stories!' Highlights included the Forbidden City, Olympic Park and The Great Wall. They seem to do everything BIG here which means every sight is jaw dropping - good times for me and my camera! As an an example the Birds Nest stadium is one of the best I have ever seen and it is huge, and The Great Wall is 'great' for a reason. Despite the weather being poor it was an amazing thing to see and climbing some of the 60 degree staircases was errr...fun! ;-)

We also had some Peking Duck which I have to say I was a little disappointed with - it's better in Chinatown!! I'm not sure if I was in the wrong state of mind, as I am normally the wrong side of a bottle of Jack Daniels before I head for the Crispy Duck!!

Shanghai
2 Oct - 4 Oct

Wow!!! What a city!! I absolutely love this place! We arrived around midday, to a city with a population of 16million - predictably it was chaos! Everywhere you turn a Chinese man is within 1 foot of you, and on every street corner there is a skyscraper! We walked along the "Bund" which is the bank of the river and saw all the buildings lining both sides. Dragon took us on a World record day. 1st stop was the Maglev train, running at a top speed of 431km/hr - it does that by running on magnets and so levitates off the track from city to airport. We had the privilege of seeing one of Dragon's poorer sights - the Check In Desks at Shanghai airport, while he raided the security point for a new lighter! Afterward we went to the highest observatory point in the world, 474m, at the top of Shanghai Financial Center. Its not the tallest building in the world but highest point you can get to - so the views/pics are wicked! In the evening we saw the whole river lit up whilst on board a boat, eating Mooncakes under a full moon - CLASSY LIVING.

Xi'an
5 Oct - 6 Oct

We arrived from Shanghai on yet anther overnight train (anything less than about 12hours seems too short to me now!), and immediately went on a 14km bike ride around the Xi'an City Wall. The bikes were old and rickety and the top of the wall was very very bumpy - we were all a bit sore after 1.5hrs! Xi'an is most famous for the Terracotta Army. For those of you that don't know 6000 terracotta warriors were buried here until they were found by a farmer in 1974. The site is incredible, hundreds upon hundreds of life size warriors which Emperor Qin took with him to his grave to protect him in the afterlife. We were put through another of Dragon's stories about how a "Tricky Business Man" managed to get his son into the Emperor hotseat, and start the Qin dynasty. I think thats how it went anyway, but I was drifting in and out of sleep. It helped to put a story behind the man anyway.

In the evening we had a dumpling banquet - 20 courses including prawn, chicken, beef, pork, walnut, veg, tomato - it just kept coming!! There was a strange one which srangely made your mouth go numb for a few minutes...WEIRD.

Anyhow thats China so far, I'm now in Yichang waiting to board a boat for the next few days on the Yangtze River.

Best wishes from China!

Will

PS. Just a thought for you to contemplate over your morning coffee...

My last memory of India was a road sign saying "Lane Driving is Sane Driving." I thought about this for quite a while...I spent 6 weeks in India and I think about 95% of Indian drivers do not drive in lanes. Does this mean that they are all insane???! If they do plough someone down do they just plead insanity and get off lightly with a few years in the nuthouse?? This seems to tie in nicely with my 1st day in India when I read a newspaper article saying they have the highest death rate on the roads in the world. No f***king wonder!!

I would welcome your opinions on this...