Beijing

As soon as I arrived in Beijing and having dumped our stuff at the hostel, the first place I was taken to was Tiananmen Square. The idea was that from the very middle of the city I could then get my bearings for where everything else of interest is. However after being awake for over 30 hours straight at the time and feeling jet lagged this wasn't really the case and even now i still need a map to get anywhere. I was well taken care of though as we ate only western food during my time in Beijing as it is so hard to come by everywhere else. I also had an easy introduction to chinese life by being here, as the others were all taken straight to the hole that is Shijiazhuang. I had only a few days in Beijing before travelling on so thought the easiest way to see the main sites would be to book a tour through the hostel. Luckily Meredith had the same idea and so I wasn't on my own. We had booked a tour primarily for the Great Wall, with the Ming tombs being the only other feature of note. However, after a very early start from the hostel, by lunchtime all I had seen was a restaurant, a very deserted and boring Ming tomb and two, yes two, Jade factories. We had quickly realised that we were being taken about by a tour guide on commission as we were herded into the Jade shops and being pressured into buying. I was having none of it and even told her to get lost when asked to pretend I was American!

After lunch we did eventually make it to the Great Wall, just not at the location we had signed up for. This didn't really matter though as, as you can see, the weather was pretty awful and so my pictures would be the same wherever we went. We were let loose with two hours to ourselves and told there were six gate posts until the end of our section. The going was a lot steeper than I had expected but I soon realised that if I wanted to make it to the end I would have to go it alone. So I did, and I made it to the end section and back in time. This still wasn't the end of the tour, we still had a teahouse to go!

For my last day in Beijing I asked Dave to be my tour guide this time around the Forbidden City. This is a closed off network of buildings behind Tiananmen square that was off limits for over 500 years. It was used as a residence for several emperors and is the largest and best preserved cluster of ancient buildings in China. The buildings were very impressive and I was very surprised by how quiet it can be in the middle of a city of 18 million people. The lack of organisation also meant that we could go where we pleased, including the controversial Starbucks in the centre.