jonjonm

It was raining heavily all day so we shelved our plans to look at temples and palaces and hit up some shopping centres. I think China must have the most shops of anywhere in the world. Within a few hundred metres of our hotel there are at least 5 huge shopping centres and all the streets are lined with small to medium shops - it's a girls paradise ! It seems to be what Chinese people do for fun ! We went to the movies ans saw a new Donnie Yen movie "the legend of the fist", the action was great and the story was ok and it was suprisingly easy to follow the story even without subtitles. We also went to the arcade and tried to play games, unfortunately half the consoles kept stuffing up, ... read more

Today we drove to Song Shan mountain which is where, among other things there is the famous Shaolin Temple. I think this is a or the birth place of Kung Fu but I'm not sure. This site is highly commercialised by Chinese standards but it is so touristy that it is hard to find out what the real story here is. There are certainly many schools around the area where parents send their children to study with Kung Fu as extra classes. There are a whole heap of temples and mini pagodas (that were destroyed in the cultural revolotion, and rebuilt recently) and stack of people selling crap ! Don't get me wrong it was interesting but it kind of felt Disney-fied. There was a really cool Pagoda that is the oldest in China, but the ... read more

Today we said goodbye to Beijing and headed via train to the city of Anyang in Henan Province. The train station was sooo busy - like everything in Beijing. The train was good and without incident, except Jack wanted to punch some chinese wanker who was getting impatient with @#!* foreigners, apparently ! - we weren't worried he was some little squirt, we are all twice his size and we have two judo instructors with us. ot very nice. I don't think they get many foreigners in Anyang as people were really suprised, curious and super friendly to us (small city ?). We went and had another banquet / feast, had a lie down in out 4 star (ha ha) hotel then went to a historical museum. Anyand was one of three capitals during the Shang ... read more

POSTS A pub nearby was televising the AFL Grand Finals with a huge feed and drinks included so we decided to do the homesick ex-pat thing and go along. I wasn't really homesick but I thought it would be an interesting experience. It was pretty cool actually, Michael won two cases of VB, Collingwood thrashed the Saints and we had a good Aussie feed HOOPS Michael and I left after the half to go and shoot some hoops at a court near our hotel. It was a beautiful day with no smog and a nice breeze and the court was packed. After shooting around on the wacky practice rings some guiys invited us to some rotating 3 on 3 then 4 on 4. It was really fun and we played for about two hours. There were ... read more

Today we jumped in the van and braved the Beijing traffic to get out of the city to climb the Great Wall "Chang Cheng" The traffic actually was ok as we were leaving the city but we still spent ages trying to find a spot thanks to a crazy gps, boulders on the road we had to get out and move by hand and many many u turn ( but awesome job driver jack) We stopped at a small village where Jack and I climbed last year. We bought some water, food and fireworks which we set off. Jack bought 24 bungers in a launcher for about $3 au which were huge and he shot up in the sky, then we threw throw downs at each other till our supplies ran out - what a cool ... read more