Beginning in Beijing

All good adventures start with a journey, and therefore I will start ours right at the beginning with the flight from Heathrow to Beijing. Ours began with an introduction to Chinese culture by watching Kung fu Panda and ended with having a beer and a curry at 6am... nothing is more disorientating than a forced time change, and being light weights anyway, any alcohol consumption at a great altitude is destined for trouble... thankfully our light heads seemed to disappear as we hit the ground!

When we finally arrived in Beijing we managed to navigate our way to the city centre by bus, but once we arrived and realised quite how manic the city really is, particularly on a public holiday, we decided to take a taxi to our hostel. This was our first introduction to the Beijing traffic system, and one I will never forget. After receiving a blank expression from several taxi drivers as we tried to pronounce our destination we finally managed to find a man who understood us (actually to be perfectly honest we resorted to showing him our lonely planet!). The centre of Beijing mainly has four lanes of traffic running in each direction which is intimidating itself, let alone the lack of seat belts and sporadic lane changing. To add to the stress of this drive our taxi driver decided halfway through that he was heading in the wrong direction and without any warning tried to do a u-turn across all 4 lanes!! He then got stopped my a police-man, who he then proceeded to have a fully fledged argument with in mandarin. Finally 24 hours after we left our homes we arrived, all limbs in tact.

A little dazed and confused we checked into our hostel, situated in one of the Hutongs in the centre of the city, only to find that we were in different dorms. This wouldn't have been a problem, however I have a terrible tendency to sleep talk... a lot... particularly in unfamiliar places, and I was counting on Abi to poke me if this situation were to occur. Luckily I no longer sleep walk, as the last time I did this I meandered down to the kitchen and proceeded to pee in the bin (I was only 5 at the time but I live in fear that one day this may happen again!).

So Beijing is a complete attack on the senses. It will be of no surprise when I say that the food often appears quite alien and we are still mastering the art of eating every meal with chopsticks. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful options that are sold on every street to tease the taste buds, including crazy mini toffee apples, chestnuts, corn on the cobs and live scorpions! Many of these delights we found at a night market, but very few have we been brave enough to try. One of the most amusing observations to be made is the translation of mandarin into English. This evening we had the following choices from our menu: 'explode the belly' 'the brilliant colours chokes the vegetables' or 'slightly fries of pond' .... brilliant!

There are endless sights to see in Beijing, so in fear of boring you, I will only talk about them very briefly. On our first full day here we visited The Temple of Heaven, mainly because it had a park which we could sleep in, and with a 7 hour time difference we needed to have the option to crash and burn at any point. When envisioning our visits to such locations I suggest you cast your minds back to Mulan the Disney movie (for those of you that haven't seen it I strongly suggest you do), this will give you a pretty good idea of the type of architecture we are fortunate enough to be feasting our eyes on daily. Within The Temple of Heaven, and in fact many of the parks we have visited, it is common for the older generations to 'hang out' partaking in card playing, dancing, singing and generally having themselves a gay old time! Yesterday we met with a Chinese girl called Chen Qi (who we met through Couchsurfing). She took us to a park which contained a small exercise area with various obstacles. Here we witnessed a woman in her 80s doing chin ups and a man of similar age lift his leg above his head... sprightly just isn't the word!

Meeting up with Chen Qi was very useful, as we were able to ask her all sorts of questions we are unable to ask fellow backpackers, such as why do all children under 2 have a huge split in there pants showing their bare bums and why do the lamp posts play music?! After quizzing her half to death during a pleasant peddle boat ride across a lake, to our delight she offered to take us for dinner in a traditional Beijing restaurant. To our horror she ordered Abi Cows stomach soup. This came with a selection of other Chinese delicacies which to be perfectly frank were disgusting. I have never been more grateful to be a vegetarian in my life, and couldn't help but smile as Abi politely sipped her way through various tubes and bones!

Other than that most of our experiences probably don't differ from any other tourist, lucky enough to visit this enchanted city, with necessary stops to Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City and a flea market, where you are never entirely sure if you are paying the right price or not. We have got to know a couple of other backpackers, one of which projectile vomited within a few hours of our company, but luckily (touch wood) we have not been struck by illness ourselves as of yet. The air pollution seems to vary greatly from day to day and generally this city is a bizarre mix of modernity and tradition. Being a minority once again is a strange feeling, but one I'm sure we will acclimatise to.

We have a budget of 15 pounds per day and 15 kilos to carry on our backs... wish us luck!

Jaz and Abi x x x