Xiangmin Hotel Beijing

... have seen elsewhere in China, with tiled roofs, multiple courtyards, and brightly painted wooden halls.

I know little about the specifics of Tibetan Buddhism, the religious order of Yonghe Gong. In one of the central buildings, a group of monks chanted what may have been prayers and played an assortment of drums and horns. It made for an attractive tourist spectacle, although according to The Rough Guide, the temple is ...

... We entered to only end up in another full house. It was simply the lunch time everywhere. And when you happen to be in China during lunch time, with millions of hungry Chinese descending all at the same time onto woefully few available tables, the odds are not necessarily in your favour. That's all there was to it. We could go on. Or we could stay and wait. We decided to wait. Which proved to be a wise decision because in a matter of ten minutes or so a clearing opened on one of the ...

... Mao's mausoleum. Didn't bother myself. The tour officially starts on Monday 6th October and I think that I am the only one of our group to have arrived so far. Other Geckos tour groups are here and there appears to be a standing invitation to join them for the social aspects. I'll give it a try tonight. I might have to have 2 Peking Duck Dinners!! The smog is very dense but dosen't smell as bad as I thought it would. Not like Delhi in India.

... very cleverly done. It was a shame that I was not able to take pictures of this delightful village area but this was to protect the privacy of the villagers still living amongst it all. I return to the entrance of the museum, crossing the street the separates the two areas after I collect my camera. I pay the old gentleman who looked after my bike while I was inside. Many old people perform such security tasks for a small fee here in China. I then ...

... s military is capable of defeating any terrorist attempt during the Games," Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying. "Troops of the People's Liberation Army are fully confident and capable of ensuring the security of the Games." Tian said the main threats were from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in China's western-most Xinjiang region, separatist forces seeking Tibetan independence, the banned Falun Gong spiritual group and overseas pro-democracy forces. "These forces ...

... anywhere - they will just barge past you - so a few thousand people trying to get out of three gates at the station exit was a bit of a free-for-all! After shouting at a man for pushing a woman with a tiny baby and holding him back so she could get out the gate I sat down to evaluate where I needed to be going. I hadn't realised until this point quite how massive Beijing is. I decided to jump right in at the deep end and get on the Metro underground train at a time which ...

Christmas in China was an interesting choice, I know. But it ended up being the perfect trip. I thought that being in another country all alone on Christmas day would send me spinning into an acute form of clinical depression. However, when you are in Asia its so hard to get into the Christmas present, much less be sad about it. I dont know if that makes sense, but it does somehow in my head. China was an ...

... announced Friday. The sweeping restrictions, set for Aug. 17 to Aug. 20, illustrate China's determination to be seen, at home and abroad, as doing its utmost to combat the capital's noxious air pollution in preparation for the Games. The Communist Party government has vowed to make the Beijing Olympics a success, hoping they will become a shining moment in China's emergence on the world stage. But Jacques Rogge, the International ...

... naïve expectation, but I remember just being surprised at how similar Linda and I were, and how I thought about how I knew people like Kai who were shy and nervous and anal. I guess I just had this thought process that these people from other countries were going to be so different, but in so many ways they're not. And that's what makes it so hard for me and makes me question so much now is because how can people do some of the things we do to each other when if we ...

... Chinese women who were keen on practicing their English. We ended up hanging out with them for a couple of hours as they were going to many of the same sites that we were going to anyway. After much wandering, we had to call it an early night because we had a flight to Dunhuang the next morning and were going to have to wake up at 4am.