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Ni Hao,
After racking up a colossal 145 hours on the train, I'm pleased to report that we've made it to Beijing.
We've been here for three days and are having a great time. We might even go as far as saying "this has been my favourite place on our trip", so far. Completely unexpected as we were slightly dreading the whole China bit.
We've had a succession of glorious blue sky days - no smog so far - it's all a myth!, we've done a day hiking the wall which we would like to confirm really is 'great'. We've been to the Olympic Stadium (2 golds and a bronze thanks), we've visited Chairman Mao in his permanent mausoleum (totally fake not up to the standard of Lenin - see blog 2), and we've got lost in the Forbidden City - utterly stunning although no longer forbidden, in fact quite overrun but 'the tour group city' just doesn't sound romantic enough.
Our laundry pile is building up, a combination of nearly a month on the road (or rather rails) and the fact that we've not yet mastered the whole chop stick thing and food is slopping about - the humble fork will never go so unappreciated again.
Having conducted a brief survey we can conclude that Mellua was approximately correct there actually are 'nine million bicycles in Beijing' - or there or there about anyway.
Before arriving in Beijing we stopped off at a random little city (little by Chinese standards only a couple of million) called Hohhot. Unlike Beijing it's not on the tourist trail (or just hosted the Olympics) so being the good looking westerners that we are, we were subject to quite a few a stares and photographs. It's really quite flattering and does the ego a world of good - we would recommend it to anyone.
For the last few weeks we've been travelling with a group of like minded souls but now this motley crew is now disbanding and we're all going our separate ways. So from here on in we're on our own (well with each other)
The adventure continues...
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