Beijing Sideways - one of the most amazing trips to the Great Wall by motorcycle with side cars and then hiking away from tourists! We were picked up right at the Hilton hotel by our tour guide Ricardo, an Italian chef, with motorcycles with side cars. It was a crazy and fun ride through Beijing out to the highway, weaving through traffic, overtaking on the emergy lane and seeing the real Chinese life. I think the pictures tell it all. First stop was at a castle,...

We arrived in Beijing with Dragonair after a 3 hour flight. First impression of mainland China: everything is huge, the airport is super-modern and big, roads wide with dense traffic and sky scrapers touch the sky. We were trying to find transportation to the hotel. There were hundreds of people lined up for taxis. Finally, we had a taxi driver, but he didn't speak any English. When I showed him the address for the Hilton hotel, he shrugged his shoulders. We had...

Today we had another market day: Bird market, flower and plant market, live fish market and finally heading back to Ladies Market. As it was Saturday, the streets were packed. I ended up getting a foot massage (offered on every street corner) while the girls got their hair done. All these services are very cheap! Now we're heading off to Emil's party... It was an amazing party with people from around the world, all of Emil's friends and business associates. We ...

Today, we went on a shopping trip with Mia and Daniela across the border to China. We had received our China visa last night (in our Swiss passports). We met at the metro station Tsim Sha Tsui and took the train to Lo Wu, then walked through immigration over to Shenzen, where the big shopping malls are. There you can buy copies of luxury articles quite cheap (purses, watches, etc). Some are bad imitations, eg the Uggs were cheaply made and no real fur used. Howev...

We went on our first shopping tour on Nathan Road and ended up getting foot massages in a sketchy back alley. We were looking at a closed foot massage shop when asked to come to a different place, up through a dark hallway around corners... but they had free Internet. They did not speak any English at all except pointing at me "mommy?" We got our feet washed in brown tea and massaged ruthlessly. After that we took the Star Ferry to get across to Hong Kong Island...