Sorry it has taken a while to get this blog up to date - the 'great chinese firewall' seems to have a problem with blogs! I have been in China 5 days now and there is much to update you on, so I guess it is best to start at the beginning...

Sunday 27th August - Departure day (...arghhhh SCARY!). I met up with the crew; Emily, Ally, Freddy, Victoria and Gideon, at Gatwick airport in the evening and after a few nervous moments whilst the weight of my enormous bag was being checked (29.5kg - limit 30kg BOOM!) we were saying some tear free, well just about...Dad, goodbyes and we were OFF! After a quick pint in the departure lounge we boarded the flight barely containing our excitment for the onboard entertainment - the TV! Swiftly discovering that the alcohol provided on board was free we all ordered a celebratory drink - which freddy and Emily proceeded to abuse, classic!

Dubai - hot, real hot, damn hot, cray cray hot! We stepped off the plan at 6.30 am to a solid wall of heat, although inside the air conditioning was incredible. We had four hours to kill in the airport; having only slept for a couple hours on the flight and our body clocks still being on UK time we made it as far as Costa coffee and slumped. Food was definitely in order and there is only one place to go in airports - McDonalds...sorry Stevie P!

We had a genius plan to conquer the oncoming jet lag - dont sleep until we arrive in Beijing. In theory this would have worked really well but of course as soon as we stepped onto the flight from Dubai we were all catching flies...