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Day 4: I am writing this on the sleeper train from Beijing to Xian. We have our own two berth cabin and I am on top tonight!!! Lil is watching a film and says my socks smell. I say smell them in 3 months time!! We spent our last day in Beijing mopping up the sights including the Temple of Heaven which is not only a significant tourist attraction but also the place where the retired hang out and try their hand at singing, dancing and wrestling (the pictures speak louder than words) and Chinese hackie sack which I was so good at that the guy had to sell me his feathered sack; the Lama Temple where we watched the monks praying and Lil caused offence by joking that the lying down Buddha was in fact lazy; a visit to a tea house where we tried 5 types of Chinese tea; and the dirt market where we resisted buying any dirt but almost ended up with our own pair of large marble lions to sit outside our house (the postage turned out to be prohibitive). We were also able to watch the first Chinese space walk on a large screen in downtown Beijing.
Apart from the spitting, pushing and traffic jams, Beijing has been fantastic. Over 17 million people and the most high rises we have ever seen but it is great to see the very old and the new in one place. We would definitely recommend a tour guide as it would all be a bit too much although more people speak English than we would have imagined.
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