Our fir1st day in Beijing we woke up quite early but didnt have to meet everyone till 6pm, so we had

around 9 hours to kill with no idea where we were or where to go. we made the brave desision

to venture out of the hotel to try find a bank. Leaving the hotel and seeing what the street was

like in the day time wasnt any where near as bad as we expected, it still looked like a horrible

place and smelt like rotting food and pig s**t but day time took the edge off ha, Luckily enough

the bank was just in a stright line once we got onto the main road, so we sat in the bank witing

our turn to change our money into chinese yuan, after waiting for 20 minutes we sat down for litterally

10 seconds and realised we didnt bring our passports to change the money and we forgot to bring the

bank card! so we had to struggle to find which back street the hotel was on again to get what we needed,

we walked back to the bank managed to change the money to yuan which turned out it wasnt a lot so

we attempted to draw money out (just our look) it didnt work (what a shock). so we went back to

find the hotel to make sure money was in the account and get the other hsbc card and once again return

to the bank at which point we was pretty sick of the same route already and to our not so much

surprise that card didnt work either. so with hardly any money and no clue where to go we just had to

sit about and wait till 6pm to meet the group.

6pm came and we went down stairs to meet the group but all we could see was old people sat in a

around which as you can imagine made us think that was our tour. after 5 minutes the old people left and

gruop went off and young couples and groups of young friends arrived to our relief. We met our

tour guied little "Puma" who gave us a little briefing got us to introduce ourselves to the group

then offered us all out to go for tea with him. He took u out and we was walking for around 10 mintues

till we came to a nice looking returaunt, Puma walked in had a chat with someone and then led us

upstairs to a private dining room (pretty posh). The meal was nice just what you'd expect though

duck, vegetables, pork and beef washed down with a few cheeky chinese beers and a shot of a

terrible tasting liqure. Once we finished the meal we walked back to the hotel as a group and

we decided to jump in a shop to see if we could get some more beers....... and i think this was

the high point of life for a big bottle of beer for the equivelent of 40p!! alcolics eat your hearts

out. we had a beer or two and then went to bed to before our 7:30am start to go to the Great Wall.