Zhouyang Hotel (Beijing Fucheng)

You read that I was able to fly from Hong Kong to Beijing. The flight was fine, a little bumpy but not too bad. I saw "Escape to Witch Mountain" and ate my lunch with Haugen Daus (How do you spell that?) ice cream. That was very good. When you arrive in China they ask you to stay seated and they send in a crew to check your temperature. They have a thermometer that scans your forehead. As they were checking they stopped at one lady's seat. It ...

... on has been restored but kept its original character with vastly uneven steps. We walked for a good few hours, stopping for breath, water and photos along the way. I was amazed by the scale of it, the wall went for as long as you could see in all directions, it was overwhelming! I still cant believe i has stood and walked on The Great Wall, its something id heard about but never imagined i would get the chance to go and actually see it for myself. It was an amazing ...

... of that, I haven't quite resolved that one myself. Back to Tom - I couldn't have been more wrong. Meeting Tom during the Olympics was akin to reading "On the Road" in the Gambia - reaffirming my belief in what can really be great about America. The undying belief that a frontier is really more of a guideline than a boundary, that there's no reason on God's green earth why any person shouldn't be casual and friendly with ...

... provinces who have tickets but have not yet booked rooms. When August comes, the occupancy rate will be much higher than the present booking rate." But there have been rumors linking the Chinese government's new visa controls to low hotel reservations. Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizers, denied that the new visa regulations were responsible for low hotel bookings. "The visa policy is very clear -- it's to guarantee the security of ...

... t say anything bad, they got me good until she decided that the joke had run its course because I had stopped trying to talk to her all together after maybe ten minutes. The next few days proved to be right up there in terms of the level of fun, quality of sight-seeing, and enjoyment of the company I was with. We did a brief driving tour of the city and it wasn't an hour ...

Right after checking in at LAX for our 12 hour flight to Beijing, we ran into Hahn Rohan -- a old colleague from PayMyBills. Her mother was on the same flight as us, going to visit Hahn's sister. She asked us to "take care of her" because she did not speak English (much). (Eh, we don't speak Vietnamese or Mandrin.) It turned out that there are signs in English everwhere, as the city is ramping up for the Olympics ...

... ch pracují výhradně zenský (chlapi fyzicky makají, strází či řídí) a téměř vzdy je jich zaměstnáno zbytečně moc (na kazdém místě jsou minimálně po dvou). Tak třeba onen lístek je třeba koupit u zenský za přepázkou jen proto, aby ho dalsí zenská záhy přeskrtla. Cestou k nasemu jedinému zarezervovanému spaní v Leo Hostelu mě docela překvapuje absence západních turistů (i kdyz chápu, ze se těch n ...

... screamed one last thing: " Now I will make you listen to some Iggy Pop! " He followed through on this threat. We had a delicious Big N Tasty meal at McShit and then caught the train to Beijing. An older fellow from Australia was sure glad to have somebody to talk to in english. After 5 hours though he was extremely redundant telling me the same stories over and over. Me and Kirsten didn't sleep too well that night. Our ...

... Palace is 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from central Beijing. Having the largest royal park and being well preserved, it was designated, in 1960 by the State Council, as a Key Cultural Relics Protection Site of China. Containing examples of the ancient arts, it also has graceful landscapes and magnificent constructions. The Summer Palace is the archetypal Chinese garden, and is ranked amongst the most noted and classical gardens of the world. In 1998 ...

Yup, I've decided to stay one more night in Novosibirsk and head south in the morning. It's only a couple hundred kms to Barnaul so I'll probably just pass through and see how far I get. From some advice in Ulaan-Bataar I've decided to take the South road from Tsagaannuur and go through the Gobi. I would have preferred the Northern route but it is completely washed out until after rainy season whenever that is. I only got stopped ...