Tonight I visited the Beijing night market, where all of the things you hear about Chinese people eating and don't actually ever believe 100% are on sale. From scorpions, beetles and crickets to goats penises and dog meat, you can get it all here. The place is heaving with locals and the food on offer is said to be speciality food. Put it this way, its far removed from the Bath Christmas night market!! I tried the scorpions and the silm worms, which come nicely presented stuck on kebab sticks. I was at the market with two Australian guys and we couldn't decide if I should pull the stingers off the scorpions before eating them, so I did off the first two and then the guy who sold them to me said I should eat it, ... read more

Today I went to visit the Great Wall. I managed to go to one of the further away sections from Beijing along with two friends, so there weren't really many tourists and therefore we pretty much had a 10K section all to ourselves. We walked a 10K distance along the wall from Jingshanling to Simatai which was really interesting because unlike some of the other more tour-group focused sections much of this part had not been restored so we got to see the original stonework. The Simatai section of the wall is in Gubeikou Town to the north-east of Miyun, Beijing, about 3 hours out of the city by minibus. Simatai Great Wall is separated into eastern and western parts by a valley, with a pretty ricketty chain bridge you have to cross to reach the ... read more

I spent three days in Boston this week. I don't know all that much about British-American history and Boston seemed a pretty good place to start learning! I arrived in from NY at lunch time on Wednesday and had to stop on my way to the hostel to play in the snow. It was very exciting, the first snow I have seen this year :P so I played for quite a while and got my bearings thoroughly mixed up before happilly heading off eastwards accross town, the opposite direction to the hostel. Eventually I was so lost and cold I went into a hotel where the staff realised I was British (aw my gawd I love your accent...!!) and printed me a map. What I didn't realise was that they got it from the hostel's old ... read more

My last few days in Peru were spent in Mancora, at the very north on the coastal border with Equador. The temperature was about 35 degrees, it was sunny all day, I have very little to say about it as I spent pretty much all of my time there relaxing on the beach, swimming in the sea and in the pool and reading my book... but I wanted to put some pictures up just to make you jealous! :P Sorry! ... read more

I was starting to wonder whether Peruvian men had a weird fetish for yellow underwear as ever shop had hundreds of pairs on display until I realised this is how they celebrate new year in Peru. So in order to have a thoroughly Peruvian experience Ai, the other volunteer, and I went shopping and got ourselves a pair each. The yellow is for good luck, and the picture on the front indicates what you want good luck in... with the options generally being dollar signs for money and hearts for love. As I was in a Ayacucho and probably pretty well off in comparison with most people there going for the dollar sign seemed a little off, so I got some hearts and thought that maybe it could mean Jim gets some good luck - he's ... read more