Hoorah! We are finally out of Beijing and have moved onto Hanoi in Vietnam. The first notable difference is the change in temperature...its back to flip flops and t-shirts after having been cocooned in many layers for the past 6 weeks. It seems that horn tooting motorcycles rule the road here and few people have cars but there is definitely a knack to crossing the road - you just have to step out and start walking slowly to allow the bikes to swerve around you...

We headed out this morning with a group of people from the hostel for the Summer Palace just outside of the city. This was the place that the Emperor's went to to relax in the summer and they certainly did a good job of creating a stunning and huge place...no beach huts for them! There were some fantastic buildings and beautiful architecture abound. They are really into their rockeries on a big scale and it was a good place to climb and hide in the little cav...

After having the luxury of not getting up before 9am since Nepal we were rudely awaken by the alarm clock at 6 this morning. The reason....we were heading to The Great Wall of China - hoorah! We chose to go on the trek along the wall from Jinshanling to Simatai after a recommendation from one of the guys at the hostel. It was about 10km and very steep and stony in places but it was an absolutely amazing experience. As it is out of season everything was shut ...

The Forbidden City in the Dongcheng district beckoned us in today and to say that it is massive would be an understatement. We were in there for 4 hours and still did not see every bit of it having been beaten by the severe cold. The buildings were really impressive just for their scale and they were surrounded by immense courtyards, and from what we could gather from our audio tour the place mainly catered for feasts, celebrations and entertaining important...

We have arrived in the capital of the most populous nation on earth - Beijing or Peking as it used to be called. Home of the yummy duck, bicycles, Mao memorabilia and future home of the Olympic Games 2008. First impressions are, "yep, its another massive city in China" but after reading up on Beijing it has absolutely tons of history and subsequently loads to do. It is definitely in the midst of some kind of revolution and Western culture is cropping up every...