Hutongren Bed & Breakfast Beijing

... we headed to the show,got some snacks (course broc got beer-out of a vending machine) & settled in! The show was amazing,highlight of the trip so far! the stuff the do is class! it worries me how they first found out they could do this stuff!! they even managed to fit 12 on one bike, crazy stuff!! well worth the visit! When we got back to the hostel, we met a girl Lisa from Meath & her Kiwi boyfriend who recognised me from 'Showhouse'! Had a right laugh with them & ...

... heard some one from behind say with a loud voice:
“Accept my congratulations, Brother Yü-ts’un; I’ve now come, with the express purpose of giving you the welcome news!”
Yü-ts’un lost no time in turning his head round to look at the speaker. But reader, if you wish to learn who the man was, listen to the details given in the following chapter.

... onze toestand (te weinig slaap vannacht en te moe overdag) hadden wij geen zin om 3 uur in de rij te gaan staan voor tickets voor een bezoek aan het paleis zelf. We hebben lekker in de tuinen gewandeld. Ook hebben we het plein van de hemelse vrede bezocht. Verder zijn we in de Great Hall of People geweest (parlementsgebouw). Indrukwekkend hoeveel groter dit alles is dan ik dacht. (zelfs met al die Chinese toeristen is het enorm!). Later vanmiddag hebben we de silkmarket bezocht ...

... wonderful. The hotel we are in has an excellent breakfast buffet each morning. I eat a lot for breakfast because it is almost all western food and I can start my day with lots of energy. For lunch this day, we went to a wonderful restaurant with incredible traditional chinese atmosphere and excellent food. Guests were placed in these little individual rooms with doors and windows that faced a beautiful little pond with waterfalls and bridges. The ...

... it's not a huge issue; I've found few fluent English speakers in most of the places I've gone in Hohhot and Beijing and have done fine overall. I also assumed that going alone to the many places along the Silk Road that the tour went (Xi'an, Dunhuang, Turpan, Urumqi, and Kashgar, plus Shipton's Arch outside Kashgar) in two weeks would be much more difficult. This is absolutely true. Public transit is available to most of the places we went, but would have been ...

... point I was starting to get pretty tired of it, mostly because I had to have my escort translate half of what they said, and also because I hadnt slept for a few days. I realized if I closed my eyes, however, people would no longer try to talk to me, so I tried to sleep, albeit unsuccesfully. There was really nowhere to lay my head so I had to try sleeping sitting straight up, which proved difficult. Finally Suzy made me switch spots with ...

... were packed up and people began shouting at each other and running down the street, the Police showed up. Seems I was in the middle of a raid - how exciting. Well that was it for Beijing - we checked out and made it to the train station. Words cannot describe a Chinese train station yet alone the biggest one in the country during spring festival. Suffice to say it was a form of semi-organised anarchy with two nervous foreigners stuck in the middle ...