Suzi 23/05/06

Safely arrived in China last Friday after saying a fond goodbye to the Trans-Siberian, was a fantastic experience. Forgot to mention it last time but there is a traditional Mongolian/Buryat game played with the ankle bones of sheep that we learnt in Ulan Ude and Elstei and we were lucky enough (not so lucky for the sheep obviously!) to be able to buy some at the ger camp as they had some spare. Look forward to teaching you how to play. Parties will never be the same again! Having a great time in Beijing and the internet is available at our hostel after all, the warnings it would not be turned out to be urban myths! Our hostel, the Red Lantern, is great and located in a hutong (a maze of back lanes and alleys that the locals live in) to the north-west of the city centre. It's nice being here as the shops are fab, everything is very cheap and the people are amazingly friendly. We have a kebab shop down the road where each skewer is 7p so tucked in to those for dinner on our first night! We went to visit the Great Wall at Mutianyu (one of the restored sections that is open to visitors about 90km from Beijing) yesterday and had a great day. Was a really steep climb but worth it for the views. Mutianyu was bathed in sunshine and you could see the wall for miles and miles! We have also been to visit the Forbidden City, Tian'anmen Square and Jinshan Park. Tian'anmen actually means Gate of Heavenly Peace and refers to the entrance gate to the forbidden city. Given the Square's history the name seems quite ironic but it's the laregest open square in the world and feels quite special walking around and soaking up a little bit of that history. The Forbidden Sity was also amazing, its absolutely huge and took us about 6 hours to walk round about 70%. The palaces and gardens are really beautiful and really interesting but, for all the grandeur, the Emperor only actually left the palace once a year (on Winter Solstice) and that's no life in my book. We are hoping to go to Chairman Mao's mausoleum this afternoon and see the great man himself. Apparently they keep him in a freezer and then wheel him out for 2 hours every day so should be quite an experience if we do make it through the queues. The food here is completely different from the chinese we know at home, we were really suprized, not a spring roll in sight! Traditional Beijing cuisine revolves around wanton and dumplings and we have enjoyed trying the food. Getting quite acomplished with chinese toilets but, sadly, not yet so accomplished with chopsticks so dinner takes a while as knife and fork are simply not an option so we just struggle through! All my clothes are covered in soya sauce but has been great fun! We went to Quanjude Peking Duck restaurant last night with Andy and Neil, our friends from Edinburgh, who we met in Moscow. It's the most famous restaurant in Moscow, established in 1852 and you get a whole duck carved at your table by the chef and it was great fun. Will be sad to say goodbye to Andy and Neil as they've been great company and lots of fun but hopefully we'll manage a few beers together at some point when we get home! We are getting the overnight sleeper to Xi'an tonight (after 5 days here we feel rested enough to get back on a train for 14 hours!) and then not sure where we are heading after that before we leave for Hong Kong. Will keep you posted! Thorsten has very cleverly managed to upload a few piccies to our website, depsite the instructions being in Chinese, so if you'd like a look at some of our memories of Russia and Mongolia, please click here.