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Chris' birthday proved to be one of our more interesting days on our trip when a few days before we were told that it was impossible to get a train from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing in the next three weeks. The only alternative that we could work out was to (over Chris' birthday) take a 35 hour local train to the Mongolian-Chinese border (a trip that without stops should have taken only a couple of hours) and then find a sleeper bus to take us overnight to Beijing.


The first thing I noticed when entering China was that EVERY store looked like it was a chinese restaurant to me as they had lanterns and dragons out the front and chinese writing on the windows.

Beijing was without a doubt one of the best cities I have been to. Jam-packed with eastern culture, it is suprisingly tourist friendly and whilst I was there for a week, I didn't see even a quarter of its attractions. One reason for this may have been the addiction Chris and I developed for the markets and the batering system that was used there. Between the two of us we brought, Ugg boots, trainers, ski jackets, wind breakers, pearls, necklaces, handbags and football shirts, mostly after getting the vendor down to at least one tenth of their original asking price. It became such a game for us... I loved it!!!

Then there was the food............. YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!