C Kong International Hotel Beijing

... It was a nice pad, and I'm very grateful to him for letting me stay there for a couple days.

The very next day I started apartment hunting. Considering my limited facility with the language this was something of a challenge. After consulting with Thomas, I recalled the words for air conditioning, refrigerator, and western style toilet. These were the basics, and after that it was just a matter of looking around. I finally did find the one ...

... I was aiming at. "But isn't this a day off in China?" "Yes, it is." "So what kind of a day off is it when all the shops are open?" "Of course, they are open. What else should they do?" "In Europe if it's a day off, then it's a day off for everybody." "Really?!" she seemed genuinely surprised. "Then, where can people go shopping?" "Shopping? On a day off?" now I was a bit confused. "Yes." "You don't go shopping on a day off. It's a... well... day off." "What kind of a day off is it when you ...

... that they could sell you something. They would tell you the most obvious stuff like say "this is the Great Wall" as if we had missed it or come to visit the fabulous snack bar at the entrance. Talking about snacks, the vendors would sell water, candy, and beer at different points of the 6-mile hike. I don't know about you, but I don't too often think in the middle of a grueling hike that I'd really like to refresh and rehydrate with lukewarm beer. We ignored the vendors from the ...

... home in Hertfordshire at 10pm last Thursday night when six of us discovered our Olympic accreditation - and therefore our Chinese visas - had been declared invalid. Don't ask me, but it seemed to involve numbers on passports not corresponding with the numbers on our Olympic accreditation, which acts as a visa and general go-anywhere pass. Poor Lisa Pedrisa, our valiant office manager, spent all of last Friday trying to rescue the situation with the Chinese ...

... quick warm up (one and two and ti(?) and four) and got down to a very quick rehearsal. We got our third set of instructions on how we were supposed to pronounce the Chinese words in one of our songs, and just bashed through the rest of our music. By the end of the reahearsal I had already developed feelings of hate for John. Maybe in real life he was a nice person, I don't know, but when he was struggling to keep control of the whole group, he came across as an *******.

... ein Familienbetrieb und selbts den Angestellten scheint das Arbeiten Freude zu machen. Den Entenzoegling des Hauses und nette Gitarrenstimmung im Hof gibts gratis dazu. Aber morgen gehts leider schon weiter, auch wenn es Zeit wird, die Luft hier in Beijing ist einfach zu dicke, zu viele Autos, der Himmel versmogt, das Fitzelchen Blau haben wir bis heute vergeblich gesucht. Next stop, Hanoi / Vietnam. Och sa lite pa svenska. Under veckan har vi provat pa diverse satt att ...

... pictures with friendly Koreans! I knew from my rough guide that most of the wall had been left to degrade and had been a failure to keep bandits/enemies at bay (especially Genghis). But it was useful as a means of getting stuff about the country in tricky and dangerousa terraiun. I could have found out alot more but the 5 hours journey and the 2 hours of looking around was led by a Chinese guide so i learnt very little apart from what i had read ...

... at it I should be fine... and of course I didn't realize that I was about to look at a friggen monster of a needle. They put it into the high end of my butt. I had to just sit in a chair and she stuck it in... and the friggen thing had to DRIP IN because there wasn't a push thing at the end. WTF!!?!? I was trying to breath steadily and not burst into tears. The whole time Catherine's hugging me and telling me to think ...

... The little lanes off the Mosque are full of people selling a wide range of tourist tat and some rip-off antiques. But the prices are so breath-takingly low and the vendors so friendly you don't mind haggling for a few minutes over a 2 Yuan (20cent)fake sandlewood bookmark. Good news for pee-pee boy fans, they can be found here together with Mao caps, 6 week old medieval coins and the Little Red Book in a range of Europeam languahes.

... it turned really smoggy/foggy/sandy no one is quite sure what causes it but it is was really hazy and the sun turned into a glowing orange ball through the smog. Very weird. Today has turned back to blue again. We've seen Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, shopping district, Temple of Heaven and Beihai Park - where there was a boating lake with more boats than you've ever seen. All very cool. The underlying thing about Beijing is the millions of people ...