Word of advice: If you are going to up and leave all your friends and move to the other side of the world - have 1 farewell say goodbye and bugger off!!! I decided to stage a series of events over about 2 weeks which means almost every day for 2 weeks I had to say goodbye to someone so have cried constantly for my last 2 weeks in the UK.
After much stress I finally made it to the airport to fly Aeroflt to Beijing. Areoflt is not an airline that I would hurry to recommend to anyone, although at 230 pounds I can't really complain..... but I will
There was no tv screen, no blanket, no music, no pillow and after my refreshing 1 hour sleep on sat night and 4 hours sleep on fri all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep. Unfortunatley the women next to me took it upon herself to wake me every time the stewardess came past to see if I wanted a drink or food or maybe just to piss me off... I'm not sure.
Made it to Beijing in a daze and met Cherie and Rod at the hostel. At this point having not slept for approx 3 days I decided it was a good idea to go to the forbidden palace with them on Chinas international day. The Forbidden palace is opposit Tiamen square where as many people as the population of Australia seemed to be assembled!! The forbidden city was not much better and we were jostled and touched in places usually off limits to strangers and finally made it to outside the gates of the forbidden city where we decided to come back another day when hopefully there would be less people..... welcome to China!
I seem to be somewhat of a celebrity here. If I am standing still for more than about 5 mins a group of (usually men) assemble behind me and gape open mouthed. The more polite ones (usually women) ask for me to pose for a photo with their friends - so I oblige. There are currently numerous pictures of me floating around homes in Beijing - for wat purpose I have no idea! Cherie and Rod also get a fair bit of attention but not quite in the same way and we think it may be my hair - I guess there is not many ginger Chinese about so that may explain their interest....
Yesterday we spent 6 hours walking around the summer palace (again along with more people than the population of London)It still managed to be serene in places and the architecture really is amazing.
I used my first public toilet yesterday whcih was also amazing but for a very different reason. I hope not to have to use the toilet again this trip... enough said!!
