Beijing and the Great Wall

After Xian, we visited Pingyao, an ancient walled city. I spent most of our time there in bed with a cold, but Kate told me it was pretty nice - lots of old buildings. Not too much to do there though, so we quickly moved onto Datong. Not the most charming of cities, but just out of town there are some caves with Buddhist carvings. They were incredible, thousands of buddhas all over the walls - did wonders for our giant stone buddha count!

Beijing has been cool, once it stopped raining. We tried not to get beaten by the weather, but lost after getting drenched at a market, and came back to the hostel and watched DVDs for the day. We treated ourselves that evening with a Peking Duck feast. Delicious, one of the best meals we're had in Asia, but ate far too much!

We've done lots of touristy stuff: the Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square (although we didn't see Mao), but the highlight was the Olympic Stadium. We could only see it from across a busy road, but it was very cool. To console ourselves for not being able to see the games, we've bought loads of Olympic souvenirs instead. The mascots are great!

Speaking of great... The Great Wall of China really was great. We were on a trip organised by our hostel to the 'Secret Wall' - a stretch of unrestored wall which no other tour groups go to. It was spectacular with incredible views, there really was no one else there! It was very windy on top of the wall, and with some sections being really ruined it was a bit scary at times. Lots of fun though.

We're off to the airport shortly for our flight to Perth. Our four months in Asia has gone really quickly, but it's been amazing. Will miss the chopsticks and the cheap beer, but not the squat toilets!