We're in China

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We successfully caught our flight from Heathrow, had an uneventful and mostly pleasant flight and we arrived in Beijing early in the morning. We almost fell into the taxi trap!! There are lots of guys hanging around the arrivals lounge saying "taxi? taxi?" so we asked how much - 450 yuan he said. Luckily in our guide book it said the taxi should only be 100 yuan, so we gave him a wide berth and hopped into a legitimate taxi outside.
Our hotel, like the rest of Beijing, is under renovation at the moment so it all looked a bt dodgy when we arrived, but our room is fine so never mind.
We are in a group of 12 for our trip and we're really pleased because everyone is really nice. They are all quite like minded people, some even gave up their jobs to come travelling like us!
We all went for dinner with our guide on the first night. A great meal for just 2 pounds each, including beer!

So our first full day in Beijing was pretty busy. We took the subway to the Forbidden City, the entrance to which is in Tianamen Square. The square was packed with tourists - mostly Chinese who thought that we were quite interesting. Chris & I and Kate from our group had to pose whilst a group of 5 different guys had their photo taken with us. We are strange white westerners to the country folk.

The Forbidden City was cool. Loads and loads of buildings that the Emperors used to use for various purposes including housing their 3000 concubines. It was stunning, just when you thought you were at the end, there was another courtyard and more buildings!
We went for lunch, again very nice. We think a Beijing speciality is spicy chicken and cashwes - very tasty!

In the afternoon we went to the Temple of Heaven park. It was a beautiful place filled with people playing cards, singing and dancing( check out the photo of the pink ladies!) Later we walked to the Pearl market. It's a huge indoor market with hundered of chinese men & women trying to get you to buy things! It was all a bit stressful for Jen so we went home for a snooze!

We went to see a cool Kung-Fu show in the evening. It was quite specatular!

Today we took a boat along the canal to the Summer Palace. We were without guide, but with a Chris who was armed with a map and compass so we managed to find the quite out of the way boats that took up a single line in someones guide book.
The Summer Palace was quite like the Forbidden City in that it was a huge and sprawling place with lots of different areas and lots of little (or not so little) buildings.
We walked along the lake - it all looked very typically Chinese with pagodas and weeping willow trees.

It was at the Summer palace that our first bad thing happened (not too bad though!). Our lunch was horrendous!! It was a set menu and involved lots of strange cold dishes and some strange hot dishes, all of which were pretty revolting.

So now we're sat in a youth hostel internet cafe, struggling with the Chinese characters on this computer and the extremeley duff keyboard!
We've uploaded a few photos and will put some more on when we can find a better connection - probably in Shanghai.

We're off to the Great Wall tomorrow for two days.

PS - Jen doesn't like squatting!