I groaned as my alarm went off at 5am this morning and realized the enormity of what was in store today. I got up and dressed quickly and trooped down stairs to wait for my passengers and pray the taxi was not late. The taxis arrived on time and I herded everyone outside and gave everyone a number for their train berth so that we could just get into the train and swap around later if necessary. We drove to Beijing Central Railway Station and went through sec...

Bright and early start this morning for our trip to the Great Wall of China. Our local guide Alex collected us from the hotel and 7:30am and we drove for three hours out to Jinshanling. Once we got there Alex and I went to acquire the tickets to get in, we distributed them to the group and then we had to hike up to the Wall. The steps were very steep, but we went slowly so it wasn't such a problem. Occasionally we would stop for pictures, you could see p...

OH MY GOD! I ATE CRICKETS! I had the morning free as I was not meeting the group until 6pm, so I went to the Lama temple. I walked down to Tiananmen East station and got on the metro. I got off at the Lama temple, which has its own station. There was some kind of holiday today so the temple was very crowded and there were people burning incense and bowing everywhere. There were big cauldrons of flames and people lighting giant incense sticks and saying p...

I attempted to get up early to go to Forbidden city this morning, but to no avail, my alarm went off and I just went back to sleep. I ended up waking up around 10am yet again. I got up and dressed and trudged off on my 2km walk from the hotel to Forbidden city. When hotels say online that something is near or with in walking distance, I often wonder whose walking distance this is supposed to be? I don't consider 2km with in most people's idea of walking di...

After last nights antics, I unintentionally slept in until 10am which is not like me at all these days. I usually have trouble sleeping past 7am when I'm on the road. I then spent most of the morning fiddling with the stupid hotel's stupid WiFi in an attempt to get some work done. I didn't actually managed to get out of the hotel until 12pm, and by then I needed to eat. I intended on going to the Forbidden city, so on the way I stopped at a place called Gr...