We're now nearly 2 weeks into our trip! We havnt really had time to update the blog!

After our tour with Cherry, the next day we decided we'd tackle the Beijing subway and head to the Olympic Stadium and the Summer Palce. Our tour guide from the day before had dropped a chinese sim card of for us at the hotel that morning as she had another tour leaving from our hotel which was nice of her! My blackberry is locked so we couldnt use it in mine, and when we tried mattys £5 tesco special, which you have to wait for hours to get a signal, but we still havnt had signal even up to now! So we given up on it! Cherry also told us that the subway was really easy to use and 2 yuan any stop.

We got on the subway near to our hostel and figured out the route to the Olympic Stadium! The map is quite simliar to the London underground its quite easy to understand. We got off at the stadium and had a walk round, it was quiet which was nice as it was quite early in the morning. Even so it was still boiling!! We walked round the stadium and the Aqua Centre which was like a huge water cube. We stopped in the shade for a drink and then we found ut Amy was famous in China! A young fella asked for a picture of Amy with his mum and then shortly after a group of women in their 60's came up and asked for a picture and wouldnt leave us alone. We wondered what was going on and whether they thought Amy was someone she wasnt ( not Adele Tom!!!) haha

We carried on walking round and decided we'd get somehting to eat before we left. There was a huge food tent with all different stalls inside. Some things looked quite nice and then we stumbled upon some lovely deep fried scorpians, huge black tarantulas, starfish etc. The next stall sold fried rice with cat ears :( and another sold sheeps penis on a skwerer! Lovely! Safe to say we were put off eating here and decided to head the nearest Maccys!

We jumped back on the subway after a whole morning at the Olympic Park! The Beijing subway is so busy! But you just have to push your way in! For 20p you cant complain! We got off at the subway stop near the Summer Palace and walked towards the entrance. Along the way there were loads of street vendors selling different things like barbequed whole sweet potatoes in the skin, mutton (we think) on skewers and weird fruit which we still cant figure out what they are! Once we got to the Summer we paid ourselves in and bought a map and headed inside. We hadnt researched the summer palace much so we wernt sure what to expected. We headed inside and i was desperate for the loo, so i went inside while Matty waited outside.... My first squat and drop experience!!! Horrible!! The only way to describe most of the toilets here, is that they are like piss covered urinals on the floor! Its funny because you see all these beautiful well dressed chinese women in the mirrors of the toilets fixing their ligloss or something and you know that theyve just squat and dropped! Most of the time its not to bad we just hold our breath, but now we make sure we take our own toilet paper is as there isnt usually any in the toilets. We've gone through a bottle of hand sanitiser already!

So...We headed off into the Summer Palace it was huge! So many things to see. We walked for a good few hours through palaces, up rocky hills all leading down to a huge lake surrounded by restaurants and different chinese buildings it was so nice! We wandered around for a few hours taking loads of nice photos, and a few more pictures were taken of both of us this time! We realised its probably because of our skin colour and our hair... not that we might be famous! After a hot but amazing day we left the Summer Palace to head home, we were miles away from the subway station so we decided to get into a rickshaw outside that would take us back to the subway. There quite scary really, they weave in and out of the traffic and everyones beeping so its not as relaxed as they look!

Once we were back at our hostel we went to the shop near by to get some things for the night. We were just going to chill as the next day we were going to the Great Wall and we needed to pack up our things and find our way there! It was so cheap in the shop, we got 10 beers, 2 big bottles of water and 2 big pots of chinese noodles for our tea, all for £2.70!

The next day we were well rested after getting an early night. The hostel we were staying at had a small restaurant there that made nice breakfasts so we filled up in the morning with a proper brekkie, bacon, eggs, sausage and toast (well matty did!) i had some toast - without dairylea :( ha! We checked out and started our mission to the Great Wall carrying our huge backpacks ( we've thrown loads out, as we realised we'd probably brought to much stuff, so heavy!)

We had to go to Beijing North Railyway station to get our tickets to Badaling. When we arrived at the station we figured out were the ticket office was but there were 8 windows to buy your tickets from. Oh and theres no such thing as queing in China, its every man for themself! So we stood huddled in the que with our backpacks on waiting to get to the window when we heard a scouse voice shouting "you going to Badaling mate? window 8 lad!!" We got chatting to them as we stood in the que, he was from Walton and he had married a japanese woman and they were in Beijing for the weekend! Thank god he told us where to go otherwise we prbably would have been queing for hours! 6 yuan it cost us - 60p! For an hour train to Badaling! To get a taxi it would have cost us 600 yuan! The train was really nice too.

We got to Badaling around 2pm. We got our firsts views of the wall on the train! It took us a while to find our hostel as we turned left out the station and walked up towards the wall.. we bumped intop a chinese man and we showed him our hotel address and he pointed us in the right direction in exchange for a photo of us with his dad!! haha we might start charging for pictures!

Once we were in our hostel - which was really nice! it was in a small folk village at the bottom of the wall, we were the only people staying there at the time which was a bit weird but was quite nice at the same time! We dumped our bags and headed up towards the wall again and stopped off for some beef noodles! It was about 4pm by this time so the wall seemed to be a lot quieter than before and it was alot cooler than earlier in the say the sun had been blazing all day! Which was so nice! We paid our tickets and started our walk up! Thank god it was quiet as once we were near to the top it got really steep! The views were amazing! The only thing we were gutted about was the tabogan's wernt working! Oh well! We met a guy in Shanghai who told us they wernt very good anyway and that you could walk faster so we wernt too bothered in the end! It would be nice to go back to the wall but visit a different part, its so big you can only see a small part in one day!

We went back to our hostel in the night and ordered some tea! I had chilli chicken with peanuts and matty ordered chicken and vegetable noodles! The nicest food we had had so far! As it was only us in the hotel the family who run it sat next to us and were eating their tea at the same time. They had bowls of different things in the middle that they all shared! The main woman on the recpetion reminded us of Helen from Sheldrakes stomping round in high heels shouting at everyone! We finished our meal and went to pay but they were all eating there tea so she shouted dont worry - tommorow!! We got an early night after a tiring day!

We had some breakfast and checked out and walked back to the train station - the next one was 1oclock.. 3 hours away, so we jumped on the bus back to Beijing! Again we were the only Western people on there and a small old man in the corner helped us with our bags and buying our tickets. He hocked and spat out the window the whole way back, but we let him off as he had helped us out!

We got a subway after we got off the bus and found our way to yet another hostel we were spending the night in before heading to Shanghai the next day. "The Three Legged Frog" hostel was down an old street near and seemed quite nice. We had booked to stay in a 6 bed dorm. We were the only 2 in the room when we checked in. We wondered off to have a look around and decided we wanted to get some famous Beijing roast duck. We found a place not far from our hostel which looked nice, they served the duck sliced with pancakes, hoi sin, spring onion and melon (cucumber) so preety much the same as home!

We went for a walk and ended up in huge modern outside shopping street quite similair to Liverpool 1. Amy went the loo in a starbucks and while she was gone I tried to take a picture of tram going past, next thing a chinese tramp was in the camera screaming and kicking off...s***!!! - thinking i was taking a picture of her. Amy came out and we quickly got off!

We ended up finding a bar later on called "Helens Bar" it was full of other tourists and they had proper loos so we stayed for a few drinks! The food was quite expensive so we went up to a chinese place up the road were it was much cheaper for our tea! We went back to Helens bar after and ended up chatting to a couple from Maryland, America - didnt have a clue what Maryland cookies were!!!! And also 2 Dutch guys who were on a "lads holiday" in china aka beer and happy endings!

We stumbled back into the hostel after a few too many at the bar and tried to quietly sneak into our room - didnt work! It was full by now and everyone was asleep. We couldnt stop laughing, it was so quiet in there and we trying to climb into bed.. we both had a top bunk each. The beds wer rock hard and everytime you moved to get comfy the whole bunk would shake and the person underneath would huff and sigh! I woke up about 5am and Matty was snoring, a couple of minutes later a heard him turn over and knock a bag of crisps of his bed that he had put up there earlier. They fell down the side of the bunk and landed on the poor guys head below! We wernt making a very good impression! A couple of hours later around 7 matty went the loo and throught the paper thin walls it sounded like 5 days of beef noodles were starting to take their toll!! I buried my head in my pillow and tried to ignore it! We got about another hours sleep when we woke up to hear someone else froum our room in the toilet Obviously suffering from the beef noodle belly! It wasnt so funny this time!! We decided we'd leave as we were wide awake by now and everyone was asleep!

We checked out after a baby wipe wash, and hand sanitiser bath... and headed to the train station fresh as ever! We thought we'll get our tickets to Shanghai and we'll be there in no time - What a nightmare!!! We got to Beijing Railway station - the main station in Beijing and it felt like we were at some kind of chinese festival - with no music and no beer - it was so busy! It took us nearly an hour just to find out were the ticket office was - no one spoke english - were was the scouse fella when we needed him? We asked our way around and ended up in the huge ticket hall and a security guard came over to let us know that there was an english (ish) speaking window in window 1. We got in the que of hell. 45 minutes later we were only 5 from the front! Woohoo! We had a chinese man behind us, it took him the whole 45 minutes to understand that we dont speak chinese! Once we were getting nearer the window loads of people started pushing in - we were not in the mood! At one point i actually grabbed some lads passport and threw it back at him as if to say you are taking the piss!! Like we said before, everyman for himself, you've got to stand your ground here!

We finally got our tickets to Shanghai, it was at 4.15pm from a different station. The train was one of the new high speed trains only taking 5 and a half hours it went 310km per hour!

We waved goodbye to Beijing, roast duck, being famous, cat ears and beef noodle bellys and headed for Shanghai!