Sorry for the delay in setting up the blog and the lack of contact, we haven’t forgotten about you all at home! We discovered that communicating from China was more limiting than we both first realised, as we found it was totally impossible to read the instructions on the screens in the internet cafes, as everything was in chinese and nobody there could understand us! And in fiji we were lucky if we had our own room and weren’t sharing our room with a bird nesting in the ceiling.... so internet was a little bit too much to ask for!!! But for now we are back in civilisation if we can call living from a small camper van in New Zealand in freezing cold temperatures and a leaking roof quite that???!!??!! Needless to say we are having a wicked time but all the same missing you all very much!!

We have been away now exactly 4 weeks, our first stop as most of you know was Bejing, China!! We both found Chinese culture interesting and loved Bejing, spending a few days on our own exploring, before joining an organised tour taking us to Shanghai! On our way we visited The Birds Nest (Olympic Stadium), The Forbidden City, Tienemon Square, The Lama Temple, The Terrocota Warriors and much much more! For me The Great Wall was by far the best experience, although it tested my fitness climbing it in the blazing heat, although it was much easier comming down by tobogan!! I have just asked Andy what his favorite bit of China was, and he has replied ‘that he liked the rice dumplings that we bought on the street stalls!!!!’ (Typical always thinking of his stomach!!) Although some of the food we saw on the street stalls was was not so appetising , we decided to give the live skewered scorpians, seahorses and bugs a miss!! And as for the sheep testicals.......!!!!?????!

So we started off in Beijing, a city we both loved. Contratry to what everyone had told us about it, we have never felt safer in a capital city anywhere in the world. All the street signs are in English as well as mandarin so its really easy to get around the place. We had the first couple of days to ourselves and managed to get around really easily and saw most of the main sites we were interested in. Tinanenmen Square is big and the flags which none of us recognised showed that some countries premier was in town. Chairman Mao’s morcelium is an impressive bulding at one end of the square facing a large memorial to the peoples revolution and the entrance to the Forbidden City (A place i have always wanted to visit). Inside the walls the city is beautiful although even on a week day its packed with tourists, mainly chinese, hogging all the photo opportunities and taking about 10 minutes to line up one shot!!! Fortunately if there are only a couple in front you can just lean over them and take it, well Laura cant!!

We took a taxi to the Birds nest and olympic park, really enjoyed seeing it and striking the Usain Bolt pose in front of it. Massive area to walk round though, especially when its 30 degrees. Other places we visited were the Lama temple, beautiful place and felt a little awkward watching everyone light the inssence and getting busy praying to about 30 different budhas!!

The Great Wall is staggering. The scenery is spectacular and the scale of it is something else. Quite a hike to it but we came down by toboggan. Great fun but a sign of how it is already being ruined. Market stalls everywhere sadly and they just grab your arm and drag you in!!

We left the hotel in Beijing as a group and headed for the train station. Absolutely rammed and when we boarded the train my worst fears were realised. The loo was a hole in the ground, there were no doors on the cabins and the beds are made with the chinese average height in mind!! Lolly who had been going nuts about sleeper train since we booked the trip slept like a log of course, so i got to know some of the others in our group sharing a cabin with us over a few beers and slating the music on each others ipods!!
Next morning arrived in Xi’An, our base for the terracotta army. This being Michelle’s (the guide) home town she was eager to show us round. Sadly it wasn’t great! The warriors however were fantastic and something that everyone should have on their list to see up close and in situe. Like so much in China, the scale of it is something you can’t begin to comprehend. The museum they have built around it is very well done and hopefully will protect it from more of the local stalls that ruin most other tourist attractions. We purchased a book about the warriors and watched a 3d film of the history of them, shocking chinese acting!! We also got our book signed by the farmer who discovered them. The story goes that since the 70’s when he discovered them he remained poor and anonymous, until President Clinton was visiting and he requested a meeting with the farmer, much to the annoyance and embarresment of the chinese government apparently. Since then he has become quite well known and now lives comfortably and appears 3 days a week to sign the books for the tourists like us willing to pay a 20RMB (juan) for his autograph!! Nice chinese writing at least.

Next stop was a flight to Hangzhou. Not a town worth visiting unless you like ‘west lake fish’ which to be honest isnt a patch on Grimsby Haddock, and you have the nightmare task of trying to eat it with chopsticks!!

Next stop by bus was a canal town called Wu Xien (no idea on the spelling). Beautiful mini venice style town on a canal system, which is supposed to be a retirement village. It would be a beautiful place to grow old apart from the thousands of tourists, mainly chinese again with tour leaders gabbling on a megaphone from 9am to 5pm every day!!!!
Last stop Shanghai. 3 days, one with the group who we now know pretty well, especially Marcus and Anna from Sweden. First impressions were fabtastic. Huge skyscrapers, lights everywhere and the whole place just had a buzz. Hotel was nice and right on the niang jing road (spelling again!??!!). Sick of noodles and rice so we headed for a western looking cafe and had a tuna sandwich, awesome!!

The city itself was quite quirky with a mix of old and new buildings, although here the contrast of rich and poor was more apparent. We saw people begging on the streets for the first time since arriving in China. (something i did expect to see more of in the smaller towns and cities) This was visible in the poorer areas especially near the fake markets (these were huge, but impossible to look around due to locals trying to drag you into all of there stalls, at one point we had 6 people following us, each selling ‘hookie’ Ugg boots and Gucci Handbags etc!

On our last night we had a farewell meal with the group and went partying around the city till 3am, i think we were the only westerners in the whole club, and we found it really amusing to watch all the drunk chinese singing and dancing to the same music we do on a Saturday night back home!

Checked out of the hotel heading for Shanghai airport, next stop Fiji, cant wait!! Took the sub way to the main train station on the outskirts of town, to get on the shuttle to the airport. The ‘MAGLEV’ train is supposed to be one of the fastest if not the fastest in the world and gets you all the way out to the airport in 10 minutes and reaches 431km/h. It really was incredible, the speed was amazing and it was so smooth, massive tilt for the corners.

Checked in with Quantas, 26 ½ hours to Fiji.................................