Once upon a time, entrance to the Forbidden City would have cost you your head, today its a much more reasonable £4! The Forbidden City is located behind Tiananmen Square. The sheer scale of this place is phenomenal. Here come the numbers: - 1km long and 750m wide - Built in 1406 and expanded over the proceeding years by the 24 emperors who lived here. - 8,707 rooms - Over 1million rare and valuable objects I paid RMB40 for an audio guide, rather than risk using one of the many people touting as a guide. Its difficult to truly describe this place, which seems to unfold another vast area every time you walk through a gate. Unfortunately many of the buildings are closed to the public and you can only look through windows to see their ... read more

I'm writing this from the hostel, whilst I pass some time until my train this evening. I've got my backpack with me, so don't really fancy trekking round the city. Yesterday I went back to "love spicy" for some more delicious Chinese food. This time I had half the restaurant staff waiting and talking to me. They recognised me from before and were keen to practice a little English. I practiced a few of my Chinese phrases and then pointed to the food, then to my stomach and said Nom Nom! They smiled. Seems the noise you make when you enjoy food translates well in any language. On the way back to the hostel I noticed this girl standing in the middle of the rush hour traffic. I set a long exposure on my camera and ... read more

In case you hadn't guessed, my last few blogs have been titled after English signs I have seen in China. Chinglish as its affectionately known has whole books devoted to it. Anyway today was a bit of a fail. I went to the Expo site, which had closed just before I got here, to see if I could at least wander around it. Unfortunately the whole area is fenced off and there are workmen taking it down. Shame really as many of the countries had some stunning buildings there. Still I decided to look around the area and ended up in a local supermarket. I brought all kinds of exotic goodies, some of which I could guess at the contents, others were either to bizarre to contemplate (sweetcorn drink... What!!??) or only had Chinese writing on ... read more

I made it! After a 12hr flight, I'm finally in Shanghai!! The flight over was okay, a little cramped, but I was sat next to a nice Belgium man called Dirk and we managed to waste away most of the flight chatting. I cleared the airport at about 12pm local time (4am in the UK) and was then faced by a bewildering number of signs all of which made absolutely no sense to me. Luckily pictures saved the day and I managed to work out where the taxi rank was and the metro. I didn't want to bottle it on my first day here and just jump in a taxi, so went for the metro option. Luckily I found some nice Chinese people to help me who could speak a little English and managed to work ... read more

Well my date of departure is fast approaching. I've brought everything I need now and only have four more jab sessions to go O_o I think i've been fairly savvy about my purchases, but I'm sure when I get out there I will think: what the hell was I thinking :) I've brought a Karrimor 50-70 Global back-pack, which has an integrated day pack and a pac safe to go round it. I've also got myself a travel towel and sleeping bag liner to keep the bed bugs away! I've spent this evening practising a few photography techniques, which I hope to use when I get out there. Mainly HDRI stuff as it should allow for some amazing landscape shots. I also wanted to test out carrying my tripod and the security strap i brought for ... read more