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Hello everybody! We hope that you are all well and are enjoying the summer back home. As expected this blog is very overdue….
Following our last entry we flew to Beijing overnight and I have to say, China is very different to Australia!! The first thing that made us laugh were the six lanes of traffic on the four lane road!! With no guide book or map we had a bad lunch and got lost - we spent two hours walking the five minutes to our hotel! We did a bit better on the second day, actually making it to the Summer Palace on the metro. The palace was amazing. Funny moment of the day was the number of people asking to take our photo! It was on the second night that we started to think that we didn't like proper Chinese food - the minging chicken balls with fish flakes on top were truly disgusting! We visited the Temple of Heaven, another peaceful place in this massive city, and the silk markets where one stallholder's reaction to us being from England was to grin and say the truly English words "lovely jubbly" - you have to love it.
On our last day before we joined a tour group we went to the Museum of China only to find out the whole place was closed for renovations! We joined up with our group in the evening, and thanks to the tour leader, Andy, we ate a dinner that we actually enjoyed!! Our first visit was to the Great Wall which is amazing. Instead of walking back down it we took the cheesy toboggan run! Interesting fact - there is a subway sandwich shop (exactly the same menu as back home) at the bottom of the Great Wall! After dinner that evening we went to a kung fu show and saw some crazy people leaning on sharp stuff. The following day we visited Ti'annemen Sqare, the Forbidden City and the Olympic Stadium - all of which were spectacular. We then boarded the overnight train bound for Xi'an which was an experience - especially the toilets! Lois didn't get much sleep, I didn't have that problem.
On our first day in Xi'an we took a leisurely cycle around the city walls and were generally lazy after twelve hours on a train. The next day was much more exciting as we visited the Terracotta Warriors which are unbelievable - the Emperor who had them made must have been a little crazy! We had a brilliant lunch at a farmers house and later that day boarded our second overnight train to Suzhou. Our train was delayed by three hours so we didn't get to Suzhou until lunch time - at this point I was getting more used to noodles at any meal time! We didn't do much in Suzhou, but we did visit the Master of Nets Garden which was stunning in the evening with all of its lights.
We got on another train to Shanghai (luckily it was a fast one) and on our first evening there we went on a river cruise - Shanghai with all of its lights is so very different from the rest of China. Here we weren't even getting stared at as much for being foreigners. While in Shanghai we visited the museum and had cocktails and desserts in the Jinmao Tower (the tallest hotel in the world). It was very foggy when we were up the tower so the view wasn't always very good, but it was fun sitting in the clouds! On our last night in China we all went to an acrobats show - the cage of death was cool! We took the worlds fastest train (the Maglev) to the airport and treated ourselves to a burger!!
China was good, but we struggled to deal with all the people gobbing on the floor! Definitely worth the visit but I'm not sure we'll be rushing back. And without Andy we probably wouldn't have survived - even getting on the train was a major achievement!
Our flight took us to Hanoi - Vietnam blog to follow…..
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