Beijing Sanlitun Youth Hostel

This blog is about my trip to Beijing from Monday, September 29-   Saturday, October 4.   It is Monday at 6:00 in the morning and we are groggy and grumpy at the train station... but we are excited about going to Beijing.  Why are we excited?  Well, I have always wanted to go to the Great Wall, we have heard so many great things about Beijing sights like Tiananmen Square and Beihai Park, and we and we have planned to meet up with some other Drake graduates that are teaching in other parts of ...

Well well, here we are, a week into our travels and we're in Beijing. Totally different to Shanghai but just as kool. So far we've been to some amazing places; The Forbidden City, The Summer Palace, The Temple of Heaven, Tiannemen Square and lots of other little gems. The Forbidden City and The Summer Palace were awsome, everything we expected and more. The scale of those places is unbelievable, they are massive, and the amount of detail that has went into every aspect down the last door knob...

I'll fill this in later but just updating where I am and where I've been...

Currently in Beijing and will be for the next few days

Beijing Ok so the train from Shanghai to Beijing wasnt too bad, we had prepared this time with food and plenty of drink ( yes i mean water!) and it was a slightly shorted journey at around 11 hours... of which we slept for the most part (or read ... i had my big beefy The Third Reich In Power book - interesting ... but so so long!) and had a soft sleeper compartment all to ourselves! woop woop! We arrived into Beijing at around 6 in the morning, and 1st things 1st went to find our hostel. It ...

So I am in Beijing for the Olympics and so far it has been unreal,here is how it is has unfolded Airport On my way to Beijing from Tokyo i am stting in the airport lounge and guess what i am sitting nest to the entire New Zealand Olympic swimming team and in the plane i end up seating next to the guy who is tenth in the world in 100m butter fly,I couldnt believe it - What a start!!!!!!. I also saw two Argentian Tennis players - Canas, Nicolas Lapentti Great Wall It is hard to put in to words ...

Wow weee!! We made it to Beijing! Well the first thing that hits you is SMOG! and lots of it! We hit the tourist spots on tuesday doing the Forbidden City, was really amazing place with beautiful buildings...but very very busy....people like to shove you out of the way in China but I'm going with it! Also did Tinanamen Square which was ma-hosive. We've been eating in some great little places, we went to a little cafe and the menu was all in chinese characters...we obviously didn't have a clue...

Hi Guys

God, we've suddenly become bad bloggers again! I've almost forgotten Beijing already but here goes!

The day after we did the Great Wall we got up pretty late. Whenever this happens we seem to lose the whole day because we're always spending ages over breakfast and then getting lost whenever we're looking for something. Anyway after getting up at about 12.30 we made it to the zoo at 4pm. How did that happen? Well, we'd heard loads of stories about how awful the zoo in Bei...

We decided that we did want to have Christmas in Beijing so we booked a flight and took off. Once again we were the only westerners on the flight and we were stared at with dropped jaws. The hostess gave me a newspaper in english and about 10 minutes after takeoff another hostess came around with Kit Kat chocolates and wished us a merry christmas.....no one else on the flight got chocolates. We felt very special. We got to Beijing and made it to our hostel fo check into our first shared dorm ...

Our first full day in Beijing I expected to be really pretty after the rain from the day before, but it turned out to be a very cloudy/smoggy affair. We weren't entirely sure what to do, but we opted to visit Tianamen Square, as it is probably one of the most famous places in Beijing (at least to foreigners). Along the way to the subway station we stopped off for some dumplings, which I found to be amazing (not to mention you get 10 dumplings for only 4 CNY/RMB). As it turns out, I've had bet...