Beijing

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OK I made it to Beijing. I can't upload photos yet so you'll just have to imagine what it looks like. Only been here two days so not a great deal to write. The first day was kind of written off to jet lag, I couldn't sleep at all on the plane so getting in at 6am without any sleep isn't a good idea... maybe I shouldn't have had all those complimentary beverages! Met a nice chap in the seat next to me who happened to have studied the same course at the same university as me.

Second day was a bit more interesting, got up early-ish to head out to Tiannenmen Square which is famous for being the biggest public square in the world and nothing else (or so they would have you believe). It really is massive, and hot, did I mention how hot it is here? It was quite interesting that some Chinese family wanted their pictures taken with us just because we were westerners. Got through so much water but that doesn't really matter as it's so cheap. After that we headed on up to the forbidden city and that is absolutely fantastic, really exactly as you'd expect from a martial arts movie, big palaces and halls with lots of decoration and culture. After that we went on a pedalo on a lake in a park (I kid you not) isn't it nice to see that we are immersing ourselves in the culture.

It's quite funny not being able to understand much and having to order all your food by pointing but seems to be working so far. We'll see how well that works when we get out of the big city... still got a few more days here, need to see the Great Wall, Ming tombs, Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven before we head on towards Shanghai and a few places around there.

Catch you all later and I promise to update this a little with photos when I get them onto a pc out here.

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Photos

Mao
Quite a nice chap according to press releases

Forbidden City
Bonza

Comments

[fattyphatdave]

Better than Thoms
This is much better than Thoms blog. Don't tell him that.

[Raq-a-roo]

Pedalo's!
Just plain wicked! xx