Day 1- 3

Day 1

Well the flight from the Heathrow (UK) to Shanghai was fine, just no sleep. Entered Shaghai airspace high on coffees and getting pumped with the offspring on my Mp3 player.
Decided to move directly to Beijing (I could spend time in shanghai just before I leave Asia). So a 45min bus ride to the Shanghai railway station and 20min trying to get the right ticket. With 2 hours to blow before my train trip I went exploring the backstreets of Shanghai.

The actual train trip to beijing was 13 hours on the overnight express, not bad considering met a really cool chinese guy who gave me my first lesson in Chinese (mandarin)....so with my 5 new words (I forgot the rest) and still no real sleep,Ifelt ready to face beijing.

The first 2 hours in beijing were spent lost, looking for a place to stay and trying not to look to much like a tourist (white guy with huge backpack.....impossible!!!).

Spent just exploring the city, and trying to figure out the bus system. Lunch was great, oredered by pointing at the menu...still not sure what I had, but was excellent. Explored for rest of day. Then met two local girls who invited me for tea at a really nice tea house, things started getting weird, but it wasn't until the bill came (Y2300) that I realized I'd been conned, After what must have been 30min of argueing, I ended up paying Y20....Bonus. Anyway headed back to hostel for good night sleep....however never quite got to bed, 7 hours later, with the sun already coming up, some hostel guests and myself were still discussing lifes little misteries.

Day2

Day two, and time to get the tourist trap stuff out of the way including, the forbidden city, the temple of heaven, Wangfujing snack street, a countless amout gardens studded with classic pagodas and unbelievable ponds.

That night, had us out again at some dodgey backstreet restuarant...some of you should skip the next part....One of the dishes was dog, somebody at our table ordered it and being a person who will try anything once...or twice....I had to have a taste. For those of you interested, it was a gamey meat with a very subtle flavour.

Then just to keep things entertaining some guys got arrested for dealing in front of us, and when I say arrested, thats putting it lightly the coppers gave these three guys a good beating before them dragging away...probably for round two. Then for us it was of two the pub street for the rest of the night.

Day 3

RELAXING....just bloody chilling. Went to the Lama temple...also one of the must sees, excellent chinese architecture. Had a chinese pancake...."probably time to go get another one"....anyway, these pancakes are awesome, its a thin pancake, with eggchopped onto it, chillies, onions, etc and a secret sauce, then they put some sort of fried wafer thing into it and wrap it into a square, all within a minute and at only Y2.5, well worth it. Anyway planning for great wall tommorrow, but want to go to the Haunghau section, completely unrestored and not a tourist trap, but I have just been told that it may be closed to the public, so will see.

One day to go

One more day....Hallelujah,just one more day until I say goodbye to scaley landlords, overpriced groceries and bed bugs (OK there will probably be a 1000x more bugs than in London, but I can dream can't I?)

Although at the same time, it's also farewell to waking up to morning cartoons, playing basketball for hours until you're sunburned and going home to play FIFA '06 on playstation until 3 in the morning.....Oh yeah and going to work (well I won't miss the work bit to much).

Thought I would attach a pic of me at work in South Africa. This was taken in 2005 while I was finishing my studies to be a nature conservationist, Although I spent most of my time in the ocean, I did have time to play with the local fauna. For the sake of interest the snake is a Mole snake, common in South Africa. The other 4 photos were also taken during 2005, from left: Me doing my research project, which involved loads of dive surveys, a pair of Black Eagles which I observed over several days near Table Mountain, a Zebra caught during a game capture operation in Karroo National Park, and finally what we did for fun at night (dragging each other around by crate trolley attached to a car...yeah I know, it seemed like a good idea at the time).