Hey ho, Amy here. So where did Louise leave it? I had the lurgies and spent the day in bed. Well I managed to get myself up and about the following day to visit some beautiful Chinese gardens where, according to the signs, each view provokes some wistful thought or tranquil feeling. I think it must have worked because Louise was so relaxed she left her wallet in a tea room. But the honest Chinese folk didn't let us down and wallet was returned, money intact. Then we collected a multinational group of kids to look for some night time fun. [View Full Entry]

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*sorry for spelling mistakes, its cold!* Hello It's a tad warmer today so I'm free to write up about our last few days in Beijing... We got up at 6 for our Great Wall trek, it was a big group, about 16 or so. It took about three hours in a bus to drive a herd of groggy travellers to the great wall in the freezing cold - no snow, but cold enough to make everything pretty much totally numb. The initial walk up was murder, but once we got onto the wall itself we saw a pattern emerging; up, then [View Full Entry]

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Hi, just a quick note to say we left Beijing last night on a soft sleeper express and arrived in Shanghai this morning. The hostel we're staying in, Mingland or Mingtowers or something, the internet is all outside, which I can see would be quite nice in the scorching summers but right now it's freezing my little typing fingers so I'll have to write up about ur last lovely days in Beijing another time. Keep us updated about whats going on at home, we're off to the museum and then for some veggie food in cosmopolitan Shanghai, must go now as [View Full Entry]

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..is the only Chinese we know. (thank you) Hello Just a quick one to let everyone know we've arrived in China safely. After a few initial problems involving vanishing buses, garbled phone calls, a subway, some well meaning yet incomprehensible locals and several big long treks along the same massive road, losing our hostel address etc. etc. we found our lovely hostel and have had our first chinese meal out. We're battling through the sleeplessness to go visit a frozen lake (it's snowing and about minus 8 at the moment) to push chairs around (?) apparently. Who knows. More to come... [View Full Entry]

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Hello This is our travel diary thing, which we hope is an easy and inclusive way to let everyone know we're not dead yet etc., hopefully it won't just be me whittering away and you'll be treated to some entries penned by Amy too. We leave tomorrow from Heathrow at about 1 (or 2?), and should get into Beijing at 7am Thursday (Beijing time). Let's hope the jet lag stays in its box and we can have a nice day of sightseeing, possibly in the snow... according to BBC weather it's -10 at night in Beijing at the moment, which doesn't [View Full Entry]

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