Blogs from Forbidden City, Beijing, China, Asia - page 18

HELLOOOO GANG!!!!!!!!!!!! I’d like to start this entry with an apology. I feel that I have really neglected this blog over the past month, and have therefore neglected you all. But it should be duely noted that I tried very hard to keep up with the entries throughout our journeys in China, its just towards the end, I fell a little behind, and then in Hong Kong Jen and I seriously just shopped everyday for a week :-S In any case…the entries that I will include below are the ones I did along the way…so the way in which they’re written (the tense and such) will be different for each city…as well, the entries are substantially longer then they’ve been (which is what has inspired me to just post what I have now, then give your ... read more

The Forbidden City, 72 hectres, world's biggest surviving palace, houses 1.5 million artifacts. It was the imperial palace from mid-Ming dynasty to the end of Qing dynasty and it was home to 24 emperors (14 from Ming dynasty & 10 from Qing dynasty) & the last emperor was Puyi. It was constructed in 1406 during Yongle's (Zhu Di , son of Hongwu emperor - 3rd emperor of Ming dynasty) reign & the construction lasted 15 years. It was strike by lightning twice & the Main Hall was burnt to the ground. One cant help but to admire such a beautiful architecture & be amazed the way it was built without using a single nail. The method was rather simple, dugong - an inter-locking brakets method that hold on to each other with precision ! This place ... read more

People everywhere! As the world’s fourth largest country with a fifth of the world’s people and the largest and longest standing communist state, China was always going to be interesting. We knew from the problems getting our visa that we were arriving in Beijing during the week long holiday that follows National Day on 1 October. It didn’t take us very long to realise that a whole lot of the 1.3 billion of the Chinese population had decided to spend their holiday time in Beijing. The place was heaving! People were everywhere! A lot of the people seemed to come from the countryside as they apparently had never seen an escalator before or been on the subway given the confusion both seemed to cause. A lot of them had also never seen a westerner before as ... read more

Some pics to be getting on with...... read more

........well, for the Trans-Mongolian train that is. We were both very sad to be leaving Mongolia, it has been the most amazing place to visit, it felt like a real privilege to see such a breathtakingly beautiful country where the people are so welcoming, it was everything we wanted it to be and more! Our train from UlaanBaatar was a completely different kettle of fish to the Russia - Mongolia train; gone was the old nostalgia and in was the ensuite bathroom (albeit sharing with your next door neighbour via an interconnecting door), tv monitors, clean windows (very important for budding photographers), individual temperature control and friendly Mongolian staff bringing around hot water flasks with tea and coffee; having said all that it did not feel as adventurous as the last train, it all felt a ... read more