China

Another early start 8.30am (not so bad) to the Forbidden City. We had previously walked around Tiamen Square but not got inside the actual forbidden city. Tiamen Square did as much wowing this time as it did the last, it is after all an empty square. As usual, people were trying to sell us postcards ad books so you can only imagine my delight when one of the sellers was escorted away by the police in a van, the next person who tried to sell me something I threatened to shout over to the police...evil!! Apparently they have very strict rules on Tiamen Square and within the Forbidden city about selling, spitting, air blowing (which I encountered this morning while eating my breakfast) and anything of a rotten nature, and enforce fines on anyone breaking those rules.

The Forbidden City as actually very impressive, it is made up of a few temples and has in total over 9000 rooms! The culture that existed within the F.C. when it wasn't a tourist attraction is quite a shock, it was based around honour, basically if you were invited into the city, it was an honour for your family, it meant that you were smart, beautiful, potentially great..blah blah, unfortunately, it meant you had to sacrifice yourself. All the women inside the walls belonged to the emperor and all the men were castrated, once you had gone in, you probably wouldnt come out, and if you were really lucky, you could be buried with the emperor - this would be when the emperor died, it didnt matter if you were not dead, if he wanted you with him, you would be buried anyway.

Thankfully, the local guide had a sense of humour and didn't get offended when we questioned this culture and its reasonings otherwise it could have gotten ugly im sure. It wasn't that we were trying to offend, just more trying to understand.

So that brings me up to date, we have a 12 hour train journey tonight to look forward too which im sure is going to be dire...hopefully we will arrive in Xian in one piece.

Fingers crossed!

Team Domro

Hello Hello!

What an exhilerating day! We had a 5.30am wake up call ready for 6.30am to start a three hour bus journey. I actually can't remember the name of the place where we climbed the wall, if it truely matters to anyone please leave me a comment and I'll go out of my way to provide the info! (Except Luke...it doesn't matter to you, you are just going to pretend it does).

It was a really hard climb, especially by the fact that we were being chased by a bunch of Chinese farmers. These people must just chase people up and down the wall all day every day. Half of me wants to say fair play to them, some were over 60 years old and they were able to keep up with all of us, however this was much to my annoyance at the same time because if we didn't want a postcard at the bottom of the wall, why on earth after climbing and walking for 2 hours would we want to buy one at the top? There was also the whole "thats my farm down there, its a bad season" & "you my friend, good friend" (yes their English was fine) but I think the most annoying aspect of it was that they weren't really poor as their clothes were nicer than mine they were obviously educated meaning they are begging just because they think they'll get money, not because they need it. Overall we walked about 5 towers with the wall between each one getting longer and steeper every time, after about 4 towers there was one woman left following us, she eventually stormed off screaming and shouting when one of the girls offered her an Oreo! We did have theories that the whole lot of them were going to reappear with rifles, luckily that didnt happen - we actually passed them on our way down trying to sell postcards to another group of people. We only walked a little bit down the wall before taking a cable car the rest of the way, was lovely and relaxing meaning we could take in more views. Thats one thing China I have found isn't short on, scenery, im not complaining it makes a wonderful change from looking out at the car park in work every day.

Anyway, we got back at about 4pm to be dropped off at the pearl market. Unfortunately, Dom and I never made it as far as the pearls as the first floor is entirely dedicated to electronics, and its all so cheap! Ended up buying a ipod player for the car for about 10 Euros!

Tonight, obviously we went out for dinner again, im starting to miss home-cooked meals, the item worth mentioning was the desert. I had the most delicious banana fritters in the world, the batter was really light and they were soaked in honey and toffee...I deserved it after the amount of hard work today! They were so good we took a picture, but...we can't figure out how to put pictures on the computer! As soon as we do, we shall.

Tommorrow, we are off to the Forbidden City (inside it this time). Followed by a 12 hour overnight train

As ever,

Team Domro

I say this day is the start of the tour but in actual fact its a 'free day', I think it is a ploy by tour companies to make their tour appear longer than it is. Also, I forgot to mention a good tip yesterday...make sure you receive the tour information prior to the tour starting, I spent hours on the internet trying to find out where the group was suppose to meet and at what time - its our own fault for not realising we hadn't been sent the information, but it didn't cross either of our minds! Doh! Luckily enough, my plea for help travelled half way across the world in seconds and we were helped out. This makes me think though, before we set out, my dad had said to me travelling isn't the way it used to be in that gone are the days you reach a country border, get refused entry and have to wait weeks before you hear from your home country, its so much easier nowadays with the internet. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly I think he said it is no longer 'real travelling'...to that I say god bless the internet...we don't want the hassle of telegrams, money wiring, stamps and bureau de changes...its easy sailing being able to rely on a computer as they are everywhere! Real travelling...give me strength!!

Enough ranting...back to the day at hand, I hate to say that it wasn't actually filled with adventures of late apart from meeting up with the other people on the tour group. Everyone is really 'nice' (such a horrible word), there is one other couple who are 'travelling', they have just arrived from Japan, everyone else is just doing the tour as a holiday, hopefully it will be happy rainbows and pots of gold for the next ten days - i have no idea what that means - i apologise.

The great wall tomorrow...the question on Doms lips will be, "Is it true you can see it from anywhere in the world?" If you don't get that reference, you don't watch enough Father Ted!

On that, I bid you farewell.

Team Domro

Today is my last day of sleeping in as our tour starts tomorrow, feeling slightly better with the jetlag although I still didn't manage getting up for breakfast - have to stop being so lazy!

We have switched hotels today, half the price of our first place, so it definately helps to shop around. One aspect that makes it so cheap is the rooms lack of windows - which isn't actually as bad as it sounds - especially as it is so cold, all the heat stays in the room.

Went to Tiatan Park to visit the Temple of Heaven today. It is a wonderful, traditional place filled with colourful decorative temples, and people playing card games, Hackey sack, singing, dancing - it is a real social meeting point and most definately worth a visit for the atmosphere alone. Between the temples there were wonderful parkways/walkways which you could spend days walking around and still not walk them all. The views over Beijing were phenonomenal from the temples, it is difficult to grasp actually how big this city is.

Afterwards, we headed to a hutong area (old markets) in Daizhanlu - It is the largest hutong area left in Beijing. It was hustle and bustle with neon lights, traditional style buildings, people buying, selling, screaming, shouting, and haggling. It is one of the most genuine areas in Beijing. Unfortunately, it is surrounded by boards with pictures of malls implying they are going to be built in this area - but there are too many malls in Beijing as it is. This is something that is happening all over the city, and I feel that there is not enough apparent heritage or traditional culture left unless you pay to see it.

A quick update on the chopstick situation - I managed to get through most of tonights dinner using them, Dom has decided the aim is more important than the means meaning eating dinner successfully is more important than how he does it; he uses a spoon.

Our tour is starting tommorrow, hopefully should be fun, no activities planned for then but we are going to the Great Wall the day after - can't wait!

Team Domro

Having an awful time getting over the jetlag, was awake until 7am this morning, I don't know how Dom is finding it so easy! In saying that though he did sleep on the plane. I read somwhere that it takes one day for every hour time difference to get over the jetlag - at that rate we'll almost be in Hong Kong! Because of this, we ended up booking the same hotel for tonight even though we know its overpriced - we have to start being careful and hunting around for accommodation to make sure we are getting the best price, a new challenge for tommorrow.

Dom had his first authentic Chinese breakfast today, the fact he hadn't a clue what anything was didn't stop him. Unfortunately though, turned out that everything was quite bland - we will find a good breakfast yet though. (Unsurprisingly I slept in).

We ventured eastwards this morning - with the aim of finding an Internet cafe - dont be fooled by the thought that china is so technologically focused that it is drowning in Internet cafes - I think there is a wonderful niche in that market - they are very few and far between (yet another lie from our book). So off on our ventures we went, through Ritan Park (which is a lovely park full of temples and people practising martial arts) towards the World Trade Centre. The WTC turned out to be the poshest shopping centre I have ever been in, Louis Vitton, Prada, Gucci etc. Ironically, even though were in the middle of Beijing, there was not one shop which had a Chinese name. The restaurants in this area were the same, all western names, and western prices. To be honest we did go into O'Briens for a sandwich, I ordered a tropical salad which involved salad stuff with apples, oranges and other fruit pieces, well, it arrived to me under a shrowd of parmesan cheese. Apparently you can't teach taste.

As one can tell, this side of town is very glizty with high rises, big cars and people in suits, even at this though, with the designer suits and labels on, it doesn't stop them spitting and what can only be described as blowing your nose into the air (i.e. no tissue) in public. Seriously, there was a guy doing a two-sider blow which he dribbled on his suit and thought nothing of it. This has been a real culture shock to us, the public spitting and air nose blowing. Apparently they are trying to crack down on it for the Olympics next year, but they definately have a long way to go!

After giving up trying to find an Internet cafe we headed on our next adventure - the zoo. However, we had to face the metro before that. I had originally thought the metro was going to be confusing, crowded and dangerous (thats paranoia from Barcelona). However, the signs and announcements were in English, and the fact that there is only two lines means that it is very difficult to find it confusing. So we found the zoo no problem!

I haven't actually been to a zoo in years, but sure, why not go now. The main highlight was obviously the pandas, and even though it was an experience seeing themm they look exactly the same on TV as they do through a glass pane. It also comes across as if the pandas are treated like royalty as the conditions that the other animals were kept in were very questionable. Sadly, it was very difficult to look past the boredom in the animals eyes. In saying that, the animals were not scrawny and they all had water next to them - its very hard to know how to feel about that zoo.

Moving onto dinner, food is becoming a major feature, its amazing when you have to eat out for all your meals - im going to forget how to cook at this rate! After our cop out yesterday with the roast duck and springrolls, we wanted to ease ourselves more into Chinese food - without jumping in at the deep end. Well, Dom got beef with chillis which was lovely. I ordered stewed chicken with mushrooms thinking that this was a pretty safe bet...I was wrong. I think the chef must of attacked a whole chicken with an axe, dumped it into a wok, then added a variety of mushrooms. The chicken was just literally bone and skin - stewed - it reminds me of the stock my dad makes after every christmas dinner with the remaining turkey carcass, it ain't a pretty site, and this was not tasty either (the turkey stock is always lovely though daddy!).

So another great day but im still not blown away by anything the city has offered yet, and continuously getting more and more annoyed by people constantly trying to sell me something.

From a freezing Beijing...brrr...

Team Domro