Beijing.. the Great Wall, Summer Palace etc..

One last 'quick' entry from China!!

Beijing has been amazing, I could really spend weeks in this city... shopping is amazing, esp. the markets.
We went to see the Great Wall of course which was fantastic, the part we went to was much less touristy than many other parts and wasn't restored. It was a quite a tough climb to go as far as u could go but we made it and it was so worth for the views.

Other sites we went to see in Beijing were , Tiananmen Sq, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace, Acrobats show which was v. cool and of course Peking Duck restaurants and bars serving any cheap local beer.

Met up with Gareths friend Chris and his chinese girlfriend "SunShine" and we spent a good night out on the town, even went to a chinese disco which was mad! Having to pay for where u sit down and bargain for the price of your drinks is really a bit of a pain! But it was good fun night / early morning.

Oh and met some mad polish guys another night and polished off some chinese vodka with them, oh its harsh stuff.

Dont have much time so thats it on Beijing for now.

Will update again from Mongolia,
Love Deirdre + Gareth

I was waiting to find somewhere to upload photos before i published this one but i didn't so this is from a good few days ago.

We are now in fact in Outer Mongolia in the capital city Ulan Baater.. a very very strange town. We had an interesting journey on the train from Beijing to Ulan Baater, i think it was about 25 hours, 2 border crossing in the middle of the night so we didn't get much sleep. The have to change the wheels on the train when we cross in the Mongolian border cos the tracks are different, But you stay in your carraige which the detach from the train and the the carraige in air lifted while the old wheels come off and the new ones come on! it was mad really. Mongolia is a very poor city and there's heaps of pickpockers and the kind of place u would never walk around by yourself, even in twos it can be quite nerve-racking. We spent our 2nd night here out in the countryside in a traditional Mongolian Ger which is basically a hut. It was fab and we went horse back riding in the day, drank Ghengis Khan vodkas and ate with the family. We stopped on our way back to some local familys house ( Ger ) and drank some fermented mares milk which was rotten and some homemade vodka. There was a cows head lying there in the middle of the Ger and brains and all sorts of insides of the cows sitting in a bowl of water. It was pretty awful really esp being a little hungover .. but interesting to see. I got loads of pics of the kids which were cool.

Anyway, i'm being rushed out of here cos the place is closed.
On to Russia tonight for a 2 night train ride so will update as sooon as i can.

Until then..
D&G

---

---