9. Eat Peking Duck In Peking(Beijing)

I love Peking Duck and was excited that we had a Peking Duck Dinner included in our tour of Beijing.  Our guide took us to a lovely park and Ian and I had a walk around before dinner.

The restaurant was nice and the food was probably some of the nicer stuff that we had in Beijing.  But the Peking Duck was exactly the same as Peking Duck that we've had everywhere else.  I wanted/expected something to be different.

8. Walk On The Great Wall Of China

This was one of the things that I really wanted to do when we were in China but in reality I hated every minute of it.

I have no idea why I didn't really think about how high it was but it just never crossed my mind.  You would have thought that reading about cable cars in the guide book might have given me a clue. And it's not like I haven't seen it on the TV or in magazines before.

But nope, had no idea.  Even riding in the cable car on the way up the mountain with my eyes closed didn't make me think that it wasn't a good idea.  All I was thinking was "I'm going to walk on the Great Wall of China!" when I should have been thinking 'oh, this is a bit high".  A bit high is an understatment!  Considering that I don't like to climb on a the first run of a step ladder this was not the best place for me.

It was so busy with people on the wall and it was pretty narrow and very steep in some parts.  It gets to about 80 degrees in some part, luckily not that step where we were but pretty step. 

All I wanted to do was lie down on the ground and cry.  I tried so hard to be brave so that Ian could look around and not worry about me.  I basically plastered myself against the wall (the high side) and clung on while he wandered around a bit.

7. Visit China - May 10

Ian and I decided to do a last minute trip to China in May.  Luckily I had been researching it for ages (not surprise there) so we were able to put it together in a couple of days.

Ian was dispatched to the Chinese embassy in the Hague with our passports to organise the visas that we needed, luckily it's just around the corner from his work and we got them the same day.  We book our trip with a tour company based in Beijing and they organised everything - hotels, guides, internal flights.  All we had to do was to get ourselves to Beijing airport.

On the whole I enjoyed the trip but there were certain things that I didn't like - people staring at us all of the time for one.  Not even subtle staring, they come right up to you and stand staring.  Apparently it's not rude, maybe not but it's flipping annoying! 

I also didn't like the way the we went every where via a 'museum' which turned out to be a tacky souvenir shop where you had to haggle over the price of everything.  Luckily as Ian and I were with our own private tour guides we told them to stop taking us to the 'museums'.  Some places even had separate entrances for overseas visitors and domestic visitors - guess which ones didn't go through the shop, sorry, the 'museum'?

Over all it was a good trip but at a frantic pace but I found it hard not to compare it to Japan and it didn't come out the winner....

I'm a Bad Blogger!

I can't believe that I haven't update this in months!  I have still (sort of) being doing the 101 things but stupid things like work and life keep getting in the way. 

How I miss the days when I had nothing to do at work and actually had time do things like this...
Not really, I like my new job but it seems to take up such a huge amount of my time - oh, yeah, that's what works suppose to do ;-)

Of to do some proper updates now.