So, its official: the ultimate taste bud ECSTASY is caramalised pineapple and strawberries - on a stick!!! For dinner tonight we walked down Wangfujing Street which was so lit-up it was almost as bright as daytime, and crossed into a sidestreet lined with stall and stall of the WEIRDEST food i have ever seen (most of it on a stick) Fried seahorses, dogmeat noodles, scorpian-on-a-stick, watery soup of floating tentacles, bbq coccoons, centipedes, silkworms and sea urchin, and everything sizzling and dripping as sweaty chinese stallholders call out invitations like "You want to eat some fried starfish" (unfortunately for them, I really, truly, do not want lol). John tried a sticky snake (on a stick, of course) and some superspicy noodles from a man who I delighted with my patheric attempts at chinese!

We are staying in a hotel which seems like LUXURY after two weeks of tatami mats and communal bathrooms - you mean we actually get our own shower?!?! It is in one of the "hutongs", narrow little residential alleyways that are all over Beijing. Unfortunately apparently since the Olympics a lot of these streets have been "modernized". The weirdest addition that must have been for the Games was a super loud announcement that boomed over hidden speakers all down Wangfujing street that, basically, we should watch out for pickpockets. This 1984-esque voice scared the crap out of me!

It's weird coming from Japan, where everyone is so trusting and everything so safe that not only do people leave their bikes casually unlocked outside the shops, but they also leave their bags in the bike baskets - we even saw a couple of cameras just lying there! Now we are in a city of thieves ands cons (we had about 50 people - mostly sweet young Chinese girls - approach us today about their "art exhibition". This scam is apparently designed to lure tourists away from the busy streets where it is easy to slip away into the crowd, and pressue them to buy).

Despite the grime, the shoving, the aggressive salesmwn and the smog so bad it looks like the city is on fire, i LOVE it here! I am just so excited to actually be in China!!! As I slurped up greasy fried noodles - for breakfast - on a street ALIVE with sounds, smells, sights, I couldn't stop grinning, couldn't get over the fact that I am definately, undeniably, in CHINA! I get a little thrill recognising characters and attempting my very broken version of the language.

It is so loud here, which is (almost) a relief after the silence of Japan. I remember in Hiroshima standing on a tram which, with a long hisssss, suddenly stopped the humming engine at a traffic light. The entire carriage was dea quiet, not a cough, not a whisper - nothing, like we'd been enveloped but a bubble in the heart of a major city. No one steps out of line, which although is wonderfully POLITE, can get suffocating after a while. I started to crave some hustle and bustle, some screeching brakes and salesman harassment, after two weeks of humble perfection. Well - be careful what you pray for!!! We certainly found our busy city - a good 10.3 millions worth! Beijing is a lot bigger than our map made it seem - after walking all the way to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Silk Market, we were exhausted. But my head is still buzzing with all the energy of the day. It turns out we are TERRIBLE at bargaining, but pretty damn skilled at getting rid of annoying scam artists on the street! One girl, after asking us where we were from ("Australia") and randomly claiming that she loved koalas, started to launch what was obviously her "hook" first with a Do you like China? and then with Do you like Pandas? As I started to answer that, well actually we hadnt seen any pandas yet, John interupted with an abrupt I don't like pandas. This shut her up quickly! She walked along speechless with us for a while, as we tried not to laugh, eventually trailing away. She must have thought JOhn was evil - who doesn't like pandas?! It's like claiming you hate fluffy kittens...