Okay so this is where it all began....walked out of LAX airport to a warm blast of air (i definitely knew i wasn't in Scotland anymore!) . Straight away i wacked on my big sunnies and my panama hat. Lorna (my fellow trek america buddy) and i hopped into a shuttle bus and headed off to the Santa Monica area. First impressions of L.A. were a bit mixed. The beach areas looked pretty but the rest of it looked a bit of a dump to be honest (haha no point sugar coati...

Arrived at Beijing airport in the afternoon, it was surprisingly quiet for being China! We got our overly large backpacks from baggage reclaim and saddled up. After attempting to buy tickets for the airport shuttle into town we soon realised that nobody speaks english in china...doh! Don't know why I expected them to. Anyway we succeeded in making it to the centre, hurrah! As we got off the bus we looked up and saw a procession of military planes swoop over Ti...