Peking luck

Sod's law. Manage to get round India for 7 weeks with only a couple of minor skirmishes with Delhi Belly, then get struck down within a couple of days of getting to China! And pick up a damn cold to boot. And met up with my new tour group for the next 3 weeks and find I'm rooming with a 50-year-old gay Californian whose snoring actually shakes the bed! But other than that it's all good!

Had a look round the Olympic stadia a couple of days ago and the Bird's Nest stadium is fantastic. Also went to see Tiananmen Square which is just, erm, a very big square. With a lot of CCTV cameras. And had a 2 hour drive outside of Beijing yesterday to climb about a million steps (or so it seemed) to get up to the Great Wall and then climb along it. It's hard enough to get to, so building the thing is a pretty impressive achievement. But it was a beautiful autumnal day and the views were fantastic. And followed that up with a trip to the theatre to see 'The Legend of Kung Fu'' which was part fictional story, part acrobatics and part kung fu, and was actually highly entertaining.

Now off for some Peking duck and then it's the night train to Xian.

Beijing, China