Photos now uploaded!

We have trundled into Beijing passing through Northern China and being shunted down past the great wall on the way. First impressions of China are greenery and trees (after brown  grass and sand in Mongolia), huge big chemical plants, acres of smog - in fact not able to see any blue sky and a grand scale of labour avaibale - over 1000 railway workers working in a team to replace sleepers.

After arrival, we set about finding our accomodation in Beijing. This was big kid stuff now, as we no longer had people picking us up from the station, as we had all the way from St Petersburg several weeks ago...

Our accomodation was located very close to a new subway line which is being built. This being China, we were hopeful that 'being built' (as shown on the map) would equate to 'is built, and will transport you magically to your place of rest'. The line was not built.

So onwards to the bus. A flat fare system seemed to operate, which was good, as telling the driver where we were going to go would have been a bit tricky. We put a 5Y note in the fare box to cover the two of us as we weren't too sure of the fare and indeed had nothing smaller (it's about 15Y to the GBP). We hopped off in the vicinity of our hostel (luckily we had purchased a city map on tehtrain) and the kindly driver shouted at us to give us some change (luckily A-M heard him as Dave was already striding off without really knowing where he was going, as most blokes do (eh kidda?)

Much hunting around hutongs (local Chinese districts based around quiet backstreets / alley ways) ensued, before (obviously) we found the hostel within about 100m of where we had started looking about 1 hour before...

Our hostel is basic but sometimes clean. We are keen not to criticise as we will surely face much much worse.... There are hot showers and we have our own locakable room!

On the first night, we headed off to the famous 'meat market' where delicacies such as snake, starfish, scorpions, cockraoches and eel are cooked in front of your eyes. Thankfully, delicacies such as chicken on a stick, beef, tofu and beer are also served, so it was all good. Recycling is very closed loop at the market if you are drinking cans: i) old lady comes and prods at you to buy a can of beer for 5Y. It would be rude to refuse ii) somewhere from 10 seconds - 5 minutes later, a different old woman / man wants your can (there must be a dpeosit on them). This is good as it gets them money / recycles / etc, although it does put a bit of pressure on you to drink more quickly iii) regardless of whether you are still drinking the first can or not, repeat the prodding / request that you buy beer from step i). Repeat step ii). We laughed (to ourselves) as we drank and got harangued jointly by both the old women / man to drink up and to buy some more. Come on ladies! Think of responsible drinking! There's nothing big or clever in chug-a-lugging cans!

The next day we were up bright and early to head off for the Great Wall. We had booked onto a tour which picked up from our hostel. The bus seemed to be a mix of 'feral' aussie types (green striped Billabong shorts) and yankees. Americans and Chinese seem to be about as noisy as each other so perhaps they get on well?

The Great Wall was great. We walked about 10km along a fairly rough stretch from Jingalong to Samatai (spelling may be off here). The views were as magnificanet as one might expect. Some of the wall was in a pretty poor state but there is so much of it to retain that it's probably no surprise. And it adds to the 'authenticity', perhaps. It was a pretty peaceful walk apart from our huffing and puffing (it undulates like a rollercoaster, with every peak being followed by a trough, then by a peak, etc) and the general haranging to buy 'cold beer, water, coke' at the top of every hill by the rather persistent hawkers. It's also incredibly steep in soem sections (these seem to be teh bits without steps or in need of repair) with angles of 60 degress more suitable for ski slopes. We met up with Matt and P at the 'end' of the trip (they had booked on the same trip but with a different company) and then headed back to Beijing. On the motorway Dave got a chance to watch some fairly chaotic driving (AM was asleep again), which included 2 cars in opposite directions grazing sides at about 60mph, plus whilst our bus overtook a van, a car decided to simultaneously undertake. All good.

After a rather chaotic evening of plans gone awry we met up again to show them the 'meat market'. The added bonus this time was that it was towards the end of the night, so we got some free fruit (kiwi / pineapple / cherries on a stick) into the bargain. Also we tried completeley different foods - including jellified potato - weird but kind of nice.

On Sunday morning we had a leisurely start to the day. The unfortuante flip side of this was that we missed breakfast (although, to be fair, we did rock up for that 2 hours after the 8am advertised time). We headed into town but our progress was blighted by Tiananmen Square being closed to the public, and an abortive hunt for locations for buying train tickets. After phoning our hostel and getting them to sort it out (hurrah), we decided to head off to the 'Silk Market' where we had heard that anything could be bartered for. Much bartering followed. A-M proved more competent at this, reducing Chinese shopfolk to post payment comments of 'you good shopper, you haggle good' or similar. Dave's attempts were less well received. After agreement on price, the shopfolk seemed unhappy at selling stuff. This seemed harsh, but then again business is business. The cries of 'you put me out of business! give me good price!' got a bit wearing after a while. Still, we came away with armloads of stuff that we needed for the trip.

After that we headed into town to one of the best (or most recommended) Duck restaurants. We ate a big duck. It was great! Washed down with YingYang, one of China's premium lager beers (or so it seemed by the end of the evening). The duck was wheeled out (complete with head chopped off and on the tray) and then carved up in front of us. We also got a demonstration on how we were supposed to eat it, although following the recommeded method (no hands all delicate chopstick movements) was not always 100% succesful.

Today we sampled taxis for the first time (in fact, we had 3 taxi journeys, but that was more to do with some chaotic to-ing and fro-ing from the Laotian embassy to our hotel in a hunt for passport photos than anything else). Again, we found pointing goes a long way (if you have a map, and it does help if you 'know' where you are going). The cabs are crazy cheap too (about 1 GBP for a 15 minute ride through the centre of town).

We popped in to RBS' Beijing office where we caught up with A-Ms chum Eugenia, enjoyed a delicious lunch (caramalised radish and warm rice paper rolls teh highlight) and also took the opportunity to get the blog bang up to date. After that we headed off for dinner at a very down to earth restauarnt where we were teh only foreigners. A very extensive menu was presented as a photocopied list (none of the pretty picture Chinese menus for us) held together with a bulldog clip. However we were a bit slow to realise that only the dishes marked with a tick (5% of menu) were actually available. However a really excellent dinner (subtly fiery chicken with peanuts in chilli sauce, with YingYang the beer of choice once again) was the result before we went off to a Kung Fu show. This was most excellent, featuring kung fu dudes flying through the air as the 'ancient story of kung fu' was told. There was a great 'dream' sequence involving heaps of bubbles, people flying around on ribbons and more dry ice than a late 1980s goth gig.

We are back at the hostel now, and check out tomorrow morning, before getting an overnight train to Xian (sharing with 4 other randoms, hopefully not too much spitting will take place in the middle of the night)....