Beijing!!!

Hi Everyone!

China is fantasic but so far the internet cafes have not been so great! This is the third time we have written this blog and the past two times it has deleted itself after about 30 minutes of typing so third time lucky! It doesn't really help that this keyboard has no letters on it (all the keys are blank!) So excuse typos. So here's China so far...

After an overnight flight we arrived in Beijing to be greeted by a massive customs line. We managed to pick the worst line and by the time we finally got through we discovered that our baggage was missing! It turns out that someone had thought it was a good idea to hide our bags behind a screen in the corner (?). Luckily we had kept our baggage receipts (thanks dad!) and managed to locate them!

Our transfer driver was not very happy at being held up for 2 hours and treated us with a very dangerous drive to the hotel. We later found out that this experience was in fact safe in comparison to taxis and buses. Intersections are a free-for-all and there is no such thing as the right side of the road. We have taken some interesting footage of being on the wrong side of the road an narrowly missing oncoming traffic!

Wide eyed and startled we stumbled onto the streets of Beijing and managed to be ripped off within about 15 minutes. We got onto a Rickshaw who took us about 500 meters up the road and then asked for Au $20. We managed to bargain him down to $15 but really should have payed him $3 an hour. Luckily taxis here are all metered and very cheap, a 25 minute ride into the city only costs $3 to $5. The rickshaw took us to an interesting Korean BBQ restaurant, we soon realised that we spoke no Chinese and had no concept of how Korean BBQs worked (they were cooked on our table).

The next day we visited the silk markets and exercised our bargaining skills (which need a bit of work). There are heaps and heaps of shops and they all grab you and say "ahh beautiful girl you want shirt? Handsome man have credit card yes?". They all have the same lines ("no! you are breaking my heart! my boss kill me"). We ended up with a 'versace' shirt for $18 and an 'original chinese' skirt for $9. We suspect they may be fake (duh).

That evening our tour began. Our guide, Eric, is chinese and bears a striking resemblence to Gollum. He is very helpful and cute! We are with a really nice group of people. We are the youngest but the next oldest is Hannah, from London, who is 22 so we don't stand out too much.

On Monday we went to the Great Wall of China! It was beautiful but very hard work! In some parts the wall was 85 degrees steep and very very very long. We climbed a lot of stairs...jack faired a little (a lot) better than me but we made it to the top in the end (with the help of an old Chinese woman who held my hand the whole way and then...ofcourse...sold us souveniers at the end which we felt obliged to buy.) We will attatch photos of what we climbed. On the way back down we braved the flying fox and flew down the mountain over a river...it wasn't very safe...they just clipped us on and pushed!

That evening, after surviving an incredibly dangerous bus ride back (most of which on the wrong side of the road), we went to a Kung Fu show. It was awesome.

On Tuesday we went to the Forbidden City which is where the Emporer used to live. He had over 3000 mistresses (concubines). The Concubines had their own male servents but they were castrated so that they weren't tempted by the concubines so that only the Emporer could have sex with them! When the Emporer died he would chose women that he wanted to be buried with and then hang them. It was really interesting and the palace was beautiful. We had a picnic lunch at Tianamen Square and then went with a group of people to the street markets.

We tried an array of foods, the most disgusting being Sparrow on a stick, earning Jack his nickname of 'Jack Sparrow'. It was absolutely disgusting...you could feel its skull crunching in your mouth!! Jack enjoyed it!

In the evening we left Beijing and cought a sleeper train to Shanghai. The sleeper trains were very squishy and 6 people shared on little cabin with triple bunks on either side!

Shanghai has been very hot and windy. We went up a massive tower to the 88th floor and got a view of all of Shanghai. Tonight we are going on a river cruise and tomorrow we are going to an acrobatics show.

Sorry that it is hard to leave a comment, my Mum is going to fix the settings so that you can (its a bit hard when all the buttons are in Chinese and the keyboard is blank!).

Hopefully this one will actually work and we will hear from you all soon!!