Yong An Beijing

... rings and gelatinous something that was unpleasant along with fried tofu. The texture and taste wasn’t our best meal so he helped me finish my tastier chicken ( found none in it though) noodles while we both did enjoy the soft tofu dish and salted cucumber dish. Oh well. Off to the supermarket for supplies and we returned to get our bags and get a taxi to the train station. I had earlier found a market and had some lovely mandarins and bananas to take with us. Out taxi triop ...

... hear someone hacking up and spitting you are quickly reminded that you are not in London! The city is awash with contridications like this, spitting belongs to a certain class and generation. However the friendly manner, enthusiam and joy that the chinese being to things overides any negatives. It's the friendly place we've hit so far.

Highlights have been the vast ...

... as a gift by the 7th Dalai Lama in 1748. I got into trouble here because I was filming the Buddha, whoops, sorry!

Guonyin Cave has the present Buddha.

Zhaoto Building has Shakyamuni and 2 disciples.

East Side Hall (near Falun) is for Esoteric Buddha worship. It had two large black cat statues and 5 blue Buddhas.

There was another Esoteric Hall near Yonghe Gong Hall with scriptures, a multi-armed and headed Buddha (Avalokiteshvara?), cat ...

... to be welcomed back by a lovely baggage man who went and found my missing bag that had fallen into the works of terminal fives baggage system!! He found it god love him and wished me a happy new year, so for the night i stayed in london, and slept and slept and slept and then got up super early to hit the road one final time to go to gatwick and aboard the final plane home, and believe me 45 minutes isn't enough time to even get comfortable!! And so alas i am home... now what to do?!

... and a half playing Shuffle board before the 'quiet cabin time', 'happy hour', dinner and show routine. The show tonight was another performance by the new group of singers and dancers. This time it was called Classically Yours and was a combination of light operatic numbers, some ballet dancing and some Irish dancing - there are some lovely voices and some very clever dancers - great entertainment once again. Friday 29th What a difference. Our first impression of Japan was one of ...

... you experience their city - perhaps his suspicious 24-hour British security camera'd brain got confused.... We were advised to try a McDonalds in every country we go to, to experience the cultural differences they have. One thing that struck me as odd, was that all the staff were over 40, as opposed to spotty teenagers back in the UK. Thinking about it, it then occurred to me that everyone I'd seen in Beijing that was in any way official was in fact a spotty ...

... play on outside. There were a few younger boys (maybe around 6-8 years old) playing on them when we found them. Although these little Chinese guys were fun to watch, I found more entertainment in my classmates. The guys climbed up on this tank and started pretending they were in battle (complete with firing noises) and then complained about how the little kids were taking too long. Haha, fun stuff. I found Alyson and we found a nice bench that was perfect for a little break ...

... could see the locals using it to play cards, do morning exercises, take dance classes, and just stroll around and enjoy the day. It wasn't as picturesque as it could have been because there was a thick blanket of pollution haze covering the city, but remained quite enjoyable. Much to Kevin's dismay, I forced him to let me take a small detour to Outback Steakhouse and get a Bloomin' Onion and some of their brown bread ...

I continued my search for the Holy Grail in China: shoes and clothes that fit me. We found where there are two markets referred to as the "Russian Markets" which boded as a good sign I'm told, as the Russians are hard barginers and need real sizes. So Tash, Andrea and I hunted out the "Alien Market" and "MEN Market" and did some damage! The markets were quite good actually, a bit touristy in a slightly different way and it was a little bizarre to have the shop ...

... and my cheap Vietnamese trainers let water in! The city was very impressive - although again we were a little disappointed to see the level of reconstruction going on - particularly because some buildings were being given a modified design. The ...