My Itinerary

Here is what Ive been up to and what I'm going to be doing...
July 28- I flew from Japan to Beijing on a 6:25pm flight. I stayed at Beijing Far East International Youth Hostel for the night.July 29- I made my way to the Harmony Hotel where I met my intrepid roommate Zoe (from Australia) and relaxed for the day before I met the rest of the group at 6. We followed our initial group meeting with Peking Duck! yum!

July 30- Happy Birthday to ME!!!! To celebrate my turning 26 years old I climbed the great wall. This year the visibility was worse and the view not as good, but the climb seemed easier. I didn't chicken out this time and took the 1km long luge type slide down from the wall! so fun! We enjoyed free time in the afternoon and met for dinner and a birthday beer.

Jul 31- our local tour guide Forest (a Chinese guy, not our tour guide E.J who is from the UK ) have us a tour of Tienanmen Square (which was blocked off for the day) and the Forbidden City. The weather was cooler then last year although still really hot. It didn't seem as crowded either..hmmm. I am happy to report the Starbucks is no longer there! Apparently Starbucks inside the FC opened in 2000 and had a seven year contract that conveniently ended not too long ago. We finished our day at the night market (a first for me) and saw a street that specialized in street meat, fruit kebabs and even scorpion kebabs...gross! none of us were brave enough to try it, although I did have a yummy stick of meat that I was told was beef.

Aug 1- we got up early and made our way to our first train. Our trip to Mongolia started at 7:30am at Beijing West station. We were in Car 13 in three separate berths along with these Chinese guys who packed their entire bunk with boxes of 'stuff'. It was hilarious watching them just chuck it in. They then spent at least 12 hours sorting it and spreading it out throughout the train. Very interesting! Some of my group followed them a couple of times to see where else on the train they were taking the unidentified boxes but we never really figured it out. We also had acrobatic Shaolin Monks on our train. We couldn't miss 'em as they were dressed in florescent orange plastic looking monk uniforms. They were all wearing snazzy designer label runners too! Fantastic! Again I was pretty impressed with the train. This time around we only had 4 to a bunk and until we crossed the border into Mongolia we even had a dining car. Not to shabby!
Aug 2- Today...will write more later.