(Apologies for the lateness of the post, turns out home is busier than being away!)

And I fear that I'll play the Wild Rover no more! I write to you from seat 32D on a very bumpy flight towards Heathrow (though the free Vodka is smoothing things out, bless you BA). We've actually hit the end of our trip and I am sad.

The day after the EXPO in Shanghai we spent wandering around the city. The weather was terrible and we both got very wet feet - the rest of us was dry as it is practially law to have an umbrella in China, either for the rain or the sun. Shanghai I'm sure is a lovely place, but the weather really hampered our enjoyment. That night we flew to Beijing but were delayed by 3 hours on the tarmac whilst we waited for a particularly strong bit of the weather to pass. This meant our 10pm arrival was actually 1am. Que a wonderful example of initiative as we got ourselves to our hostel using other transport means than the ones we'd previously planned (as they were all closed) - instead of a train then the metro then a short walk to the hostel in semi-busy streets in late evening, we took a bus, a taxi and had a scary walk in the pitch black side streets of Beijing at 4am in the morning!

In the late morning once we'd woken, we were greeted with horrendous images of what the Shanghai storm had brought. Terrible flooding in the center and eastern seaboard of China had killed dozens and wreaked havoc amongst the poverty-stricken countryside peoples. We stopped bitching there and then, spared a thought for those affected and thanked our lucky stars we'd got to Beijing safe. Was it even in the UK news?

Our first stop on our tour of Beijing was the Summer Palace. It's located quite a bit outside the center of town, but the wonderful Beijing metro made it easy to get to (all trips anywhere cost 20p). The Summer Palace was where the Emporer would go for his holidays, a lovely building on a hill with a big lake at the bottom - it was very pretty. Then we shot across town to see the National Swimming Centre and the Olympic Stadium which was just as impressive.

The second day my old work colleague Ji-Dong drove us out to see the Great Wall of China! It's brilliant and just as impressive as you expect. Although there's been a bit of reconstruction done, you can see the real wall along a bit and it sits beautifully in a set of green hills. It's just stunning and is probably one of my favourite things I've seen in China.
Ji-Dong also took us out to have some Peking Duck which we enjoyed a great deal.

Our third and penultamate day of the trip was spent bounding around the Forbidden City and Tianamen Square. Astounding the opulance of the Emporer whilst his subjects lived in poverty, but I guess that was a different time...wasn't it? No wonder they cling to the idea of Communism so strongly even though China is without doubt the most capitalist place we've been to yet!

Which became quite obvious on the final day. We had a shopping experience that I really enjoyed! Shopping that's fun you say? How so? Because you could haggle for EVERYTHING, it was cracking fun! Driving a hard bargain was one of the most fun things I've done in a while - laughing, being angry, walking away, complimenting, looking for flaws etc. We feel we got a good price for most things - which is the object of the game. The shop owners make profit (they won't accept a price that gives them a loss) but you come away feeling you've done well for yourself. If only you could do it in ASDA or PC World :D

And that's us. Nursing a bit of a hangover this morning, we bundled ourselves into Duty Free and then onto a plane and that's it.

Don't think I'm really ready to summarise the trip, think final thoughts or make any sweeping statements yet. I'm going to give it a few days for that. Right now I'm just looking forward to Irn-Bru and my mums homemade Lentil Soup.

Stu