Leaving Beijing

After our guide left us on our own from the 16th April we've pretty much got skinnier and skinnier ovet the last few days due to the food situation! It hasn't improved, in fact it has sickened us more and more (as veggies) to learn that they have 'ox heart', 'fortified chicken intestines', 'testicles' and meat in every dish FOR BREAKFAST! Yep, you read correctly and it basically means that we have no choice but to continue eating bread for every meal, lol.

However, we've now become pretty familiar with the local supermarket (after buying all of their bread stocks up) and have discovered that noodles (less the sachet of dried meat that is in EVERY NOODLE PACKET) are a great evening meal. You're probably thinking 'why not have a pizza hut or western restaurant meal every night'.....the expense! We are currently a lot of money down due to our airline going bust and so have set a budget for every day of between 50 and 100 Yuan (roughly 3.50 to 7 pounds a day). Laughable I know as you can barely get a bottle of water and a pack of noodles in Beijing for that!

The last three days on our own have allowed us to experience the excellent public transport system here in Beijing, or rather the subway system. It is mostly immaculate and costs 2 Yuan per person to go anywhere in the city (15p), which is fab! Over the last few days we've been to the Beijing Planetarium,which was good but not in English at all, so kind of pointless. Having said that, although we paid 70 Yuan (nearly 5 pounds) to see a 22minute SGi film of the Universe on a hhhuuuggggeeee overhead screen, we managed to cheekily get a refund as it wasn't in English! SWEET!

We've also seen the preserved remains of Chairman Mao, who was a really important figure in recent Chinese history at his morsuleum in Tian'amen Square. That was very interesting and eerily quiet as nobody is allowed to speak whilst walking past his body in the massive building. Worth the 10 Yuan cost to store our bag whilst going round (free entry).

We had also planned to visit a few lakes and free parks over the last few days but ended up chilling alot as we both haven't been feeling too good. Probably a mild state of malnutrition as a direct result of only eating bread! (Note: must resolve this by eating more plain noodles)

So, not much happened then as you have read, but today (19/04/08), we go on an overnight train to Xian in the North West of China. We have a 'hard berth' bed which should be interesting! Lets just all channel our positive energy for Terry and Jen to be put up in a Western hotel in order to prevent them from wasting away (like the guy in the pot noodle advert, haha, love that advert).