Another early start - this time to get the bus out to Hua Shan - one of China's five Daoist peaks. It is only 6km to the top of the 2,610m mountain, but this should not be underestimated - at one point it was so steep it took us 45 minutes to walk 200m!!! We couldn't understand why so many people were wearing gloves, but it becomes obvious as you get higher up - many of the steep climbs are on very narrow steps and there are chains to help you pull yourself up ...

As early start to get to the train station before the crowds in order to get the bus to the Terracotta Army. The queue was quite long when we arrived, and we had a lot of hassle from tour guides telling us we would be waiting for 2 hours to get a bus, but in the end it was less than 20 minutes before we were on our way. Having read up about it, we decided to do the 3 pits in reverse order, and I'm so glad we did. Pit 3 was a pretty good, but when I saw Pit 2 I...

Arrived at 9:00 this morning and then spent the rest of the morning trying to sort out the return journey. Tried the trains first (just for a change) but they were completely sold out. Then went back to the bus station who had sold out of sleeper bus tickets but luckily they had some standard bus tickets which we snapped up. This afternoon we went for a walk on the City Walls and then to the Forest of Stone Museum which was absolutely amazing - huge stone engravi...

Breakfast in the hostel and then we set off for the Forbidden City. We walked for about 40 minutes then realised that none of us could read the map and that we had no idea where we were heading for and so go ourselves a taxi. 30 minutes later we arrived! The Forbidden City is nothing short of amazing - it is so vast that it's difficult to imagine that people actually lived there. We wandered around for about 3 hours and I'm sure there's still plenty that we m...

Woke up early so got up and went to find a route up to the pagoda which I see every day. It turned out to be fairly easy and had great views of the area. On my way back to the apartment I also found an indoor market which is much nicer than any of the others I have been to around here! Hannah and I wandered into Beijing City Centre just after lunch, and met up with Teresa and Warren - 2 more of the interns we know from Harbin. We headed for the Sanlitan area ...