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Well were finally here! We’ve landed and ive already blocked the toilet in our room, good times!
The fun began when we heard on the radio on the drive in that a backpacker had been killed in Australia, a four wheel drive campervan fell onto him whilst he was on the beach, so naturally the advice from our parents was..”stay away from campervans and the beach!” haha!
After our sad goodbyes and a rather thorough (spelling?) security check we were in the departure lounge (Heathrow, Terminal 5) and we were checking out the aftershave and ray ban sunglasses..I was very tempted to get some more haha! But jack was getting his kicks of something else, he smelt so many tester sticks of after shave that I swear he was drunk, every time I turned round he was giggling and holding the smell of Vera Wang as far as he could get it, up his nose.
Surrounded by French people, we boarded, and I personally was impressed by the size of the aircraft and the in-flight entertainment (jack shout’s “we were impressed by the techno, it was like a chilli!”) we had about 40 films to choose from old and new along with tv programmes and full albums to listen to (Joy Division- Closer, Johnny Cash- Folsom Live and Oasis- Dig Out Your Soul)…we could fast forward pause and stuff like that…you can tell I was excited, ive got a little carried away!
(Real Time: Jack confirms that the toilet is b*****ed)…and uh ohm he shouts “my mint imperials have exploded EVERYWHERE”…I think he’s dramatised the situation.
Well after all those dramatic problems we decided to walk outside (just a brief look around as we had just been on a 10 hour flight) this walk turned into a 4 hour walk around Tiananmen square, forbidden palace, and temple of heaven…we were knackered!!
Really beautiful places but as soon as we got in we just collapsed and slept for 4 hours. We were awoken by our room phone and an odd speaking Chinese man who claimed he was from the front desk, jack immediately thought “whose that? Whose calling at this time??” we thought it was 3am turned out just to be 8pm and we strolled down to reception, like zombies, to pay for a great wall trip tomorrow. After a shaky sleep for both of us we were up at 5am and ready for our day trip at 7.…..when I say day trip, they meant it! 12 hours we were out today! Jesus wept my legs and feet are hurting…..our funky tour guide took us to the ming tombs, Olympic village, restaurant (with awful food, I guess im just used to fnbs though haha) the great wall, silk museum, jade museum and tea museum…all for 200RMB so 20 pound which is pretty good! The great wall was spectacular, extremely crowded and unbelievably steep, the pictures really don’t do it any justice. We did however have to get a cable car up which was extremely scary trust me, getting pulled along a rope in a rusty Chinese smelling car a thousand feet in the air is not cool!
One thing that’s surprised us in our time here is how many people flat-out stare at us for a good twenty minutes, no blinking! The elder Chinese men and women spit everywhere and the younger generation girls aaand boys giggle wave and want pictures with us, but overall a great few days in Beijing, miss you all.
Tom and Jack x
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