We're so far behind writing this journal that we're just going to summarise what we've done.
We were blown away with China. It was so clean. Such a change from Delhi.
Arrived in China on 1st October National Holiday. The place was heaving for about a week. Every tourist attraction was over-run with Chinese tourists. Managed to get to all the attractions:
- Tiannamen Square
- Forbidden City
- Lamma Temple-Buddhist Temple. Lots of incense.
- Olympic Village- Ross was in his element and kept getting asked for photos. He reckons the Chinese think he's Beckham haha!
- Great Wall of China (Mutianyu)-Amazing but got taken to every jade factory along the way.Tobbogen slide down was great fun.
- Temple of Heaven-Bit templed out by this point.
- Summer Palace
- Dongyue Temple- Taoist Temple.
We also had fantastic Roast Duck minus the head-phew. Couldn't face the other options on the menu- Pigs fallopian tube, Bulls penis and Shark fin soup to name a few.
After Beijing we went to Xi'an to see the Terracota Warriors, which were fantastic. Can't help think that some may have been re-created. There's some factories along the way with great replicas outside. The Muslim quarter in Xi'an was amazing. Ross bought some kites from there. 90 metres long! We also went to a vegetarian restaurant where they make the food look like meat. It's hard to work out if it's real or not.
We were going to head to Shanghai next but decided to skip it and go to Chengdu. We stayed in a fab hostel and met loads of great people. Had our first DVD day. The hostel had DVD players in the room and DVDs for free. So we chilled out all day. Went to see the Pandas in Chengdu who were sooo cute and surprisingly a lot smaller than we thought. Also went to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha, it's about 80 metres tall!
Went for Spicy Hot Pot one night with some other travellers from the hostel. Great fun. The pot is split in two. It's mild on one side and really spicy on the other. It's placed on a burning stove in the middle of the table and you dip the raw meat and veg into the pot which then cooks. Very tasty but very very spicy.
Tried some steamed dumplings too...yum!
