Shenzhen is just outside Hong Kong and by flying their instead of direct to Hong Kong is going to save us a few hundred quid – just because it’s on the other side of the border – daft really when you consider both are Chinese owned regions!

Xi’an was grey and rainy pretty much the whole time we were there but we made it out to see the Terracotta Warriors which was pretty awesome. The room you can see behind us in the photos below is about the size of a football stadium and supposedly contains around 8000 warriors, although only about 1000 have been excavated so far.

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If theres one thing I’ve learnt about the Chinese while I’ve been here is that they like to do things BIG. Big walls, big monuments, big buildings and big cities. Strange for a country where the average height is so small

We only popped into Chengdu for a couple of days, but while we’re here we’ve been out to a Panda Breeding Sanctuary just outside of the city which was pretty amazing. They had normal black and white Panda’s but also Red Pandas which my fellow geeks should recognise, since it’s also known as the Firefox!

Anyway… next stop, Hong Kong!

I’ll try and put a pic on Flickr later. Computers in our hostel are a bit crappy so no promises!

Jingshan Park

Forbidden City

Timinin Square

The Great Wall of China

What can I say about the great wall? Well… it’s totally deserving of it’s name! It’s absolutely massive – we only walked the 10k stretch between Jinshanling and Simatai but that very nearly killed me! If the Great Wall was flat and always in good condition it would have been a nice walk with beautiful scenery, but it’s not – some sections of the wall are close to 90 degrees with steps that are about a foot tall each, other sections have a similar incline but with steps that are massively damaged, leaving you with not a lot to hold on to as you climb.

Walking this section of the great wall really is an epic feat of endurance, and not something that I thought I would have been able to complete, however once you get up there, you are driven to keep going by the sheer beauty of the landscape and the urge to see what you could find around the next corner!

There are loads more photos on my flickr account, so feel free to check em out – despite carrying a 13MP camera, I’m resizing to 800×600 for upload just because the internet connection here is a bit on the slow side.

Flight in was almost perfect, can’t fault a thing! I got a bit of a grilling at immigration after being picked out for a random Interview but it wasn’t that bad, especially since the police lady that interviewed me was young, friendly and pretty cute!

Beijing airport was amazing, huge open spaces and polished marble floor everywhere you look – it was more like the lobby of a five star hotel than an airport!

We’ve just got to the hotel, beijings “Sitting on the city Walls Courtyard House Hostel” which seems really traditional and cute. It’s hidden down a back ally in what is locally known as a HuTong. Even the taxi driver had trouble finding it! The room is a bit small, but clean and cool and the staff are friendly snd helpful so I can’t really fault it so far!

Steph has just passed out on the bed so we’re going to have a short kip then go out for a roam around the local area – we’re just around the corner from the forbidden city and Tiniman
Square, literally five minutes away!

Can’t seem to get on Twitter or Facebook at the mo, even through iPhone apps, but that was to be expected. Email and blog are working fine tho so feel free to comment or email if you want to get in touch!

Our Chinese visas arrived today, which is exciting. I can’t believe I’m finally getting to go to China – it’s a place I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid and I’ve loved the food and culture for as long as I remember – I really hope China lives up to my expectations!

We’ve still got loads to do before we leave, from booking accommodation for our first couple of nights in Beijing to sorting out our American visas online and making sure we have photocopied and digital online backups of all our essential travel docs.

On top of that, I have a work trip to Florence next week with a quick stop in Pisa, it’s almost like a last minute unofficial mini-trip to make me even more excited! I read recently about the House of Cheese (aka the Casa Del Formaggio) in Florence and I hope to get five minutes spare to pop in and sample their wares (for those who don’t know, I’m a total cheese freak – in every sense of the word!).

The Chinese visa forms are very confusing as they contain both English and Chinese script and all sorts of crazy questions like, what is your occupation, with a choice including ‘business man’, ‘government agent’, ‘teacher’, ‘cleric’ or ‘other’. I had to go with ‘other’ as I wouldn’t describe myself as a business man – I don’t DO business as such, but I do work for a business. I have a feeling, ‘business man’ is what they count as anyone that works in an office, but I had no quick way of finding out, so I just put ‘other’ along with my actual business title. We’re using Oriental Travel for our Chinese Visas – they’re a bit pricier than doing it direct, but I don’t have the time or holiday allocation left to head over to Birmingham and spend a day queuing at the Chinese Embassy!

In other news, we now have every major item of our furniture and what not in storage. All we have left is to park our car up at my mums house and put a few last odds and sods in a box, sort out what clothes we’re taking traveling and then we’re all done! We may need to make one final run to the storage unit the day before we leave, but we don’t actually have enough property left to make more than one trip!

Now we’re in ‘the zone’ as it were, I’m hoping to make a few more posts on here with the progress of our traveling preparations. I’ve even put an ‘away’ message on my main personal blog so I can devote more time to this site. If I can just convince Steph to do the same we might start making some progress!