Work Travel Volunteer

Extract from a traveller's blog, who was travelling independently in China.

"Took another overnight train into Beijing and awoke to four Chinese women staring at me sleeping. "Ni hao!"

Absolute nightmare getting from the train station in Beijing to the hostel in the centre of Beijing. London tubes at peak rush hour were a piece of cake compared to trying to get onto a no.9 bus into the city with two backpacks and a million Chinese elbows in your side. Successfully managed to get onto the fourth bus by standing on a few people.

Beijing is apparantly one of the most polluted cities on earth and useless fact no 152 - it's like smoking 70 cigarettes a day each day you spend in Beijing. The smog is so bad, there is a constant haze over the city and you can see maybe 100m max.

Apart from that minor blip, Beijing is ace. Us plus Wayne and Naomi hired bikes for a day (still trying to get bloody Katie Melua's "9 million bicycles in Beijing" song out of my head now) and cycled round - past Tiannemen Square, the Forbidden City, Beihei Park to the hutong area, which is the older part of Beijing, but just looked like more grey building to be honest (see - my lack of respect for historical China is evident again. Slap on wrists)

Met up with Dave and Jenny here too (travelled in Borneo with them Go T-Rex!) so had a brilliant few days catching up, drinking more Great Wall red wine (disgusting but necessary), eating street food and Peking duck and putting the world to rights.

All of us made the compulsory visit to the Forbidden City (spent a record 2 hours here - Lonely Planet recommends "a least a whole day") Again the overwhelming numbers of tourists spoiled things plus quelle surprise, two of the biggest temples were being renovated (as was, disturbingly, Chairman Mao's body. Getting ready for the Olympics I hear) Wayne and Naomi did well and stayed on longer, but us four headed off for more serious sightseeing - clothes shopping and arcade games.

We fared much better on our visit to the Great Wall. Our hostel had a tour to the "Secret Wall" which turned out to be an excellent choice. Three minibuses drove out to a section of unrestored wall where no-one else visited so we had an hour trek through beautiful hills to the wall, about two hours on the wall and an hour down to another spot for lunch. With no-one else there, so no elbow battling and some fantastic views over Chinese country framed by the rather great wall.

And no, you can't see the wall from space. Think about it!"