Day 25 - Beijing

16.08.09

Living it up like Chinese royalty in the Summer Palace is on the agenda today. I'm following Xiao's instructions and on the number 10 bus, which is a double decked air conditioned affair. Waking up at the crack of dawn I make it to the Palace at about 8.45 and considering the doors open at 8.30, it should be quite quiet. However this is not the case and over the next two hours it goes from being quite busy to absolutely rammed.
It's an amazing place to walk around and the grounds are ridiculously big, the Emperors and Empresses really did live it up back in the day. The only downside is that like most of Beijing there seems to be a low level mist/fog that has engulfed everything and puts visibility down to around 150-200m, after that you can't see a thing. I'm not sure if it is weather based or a by product of the endless building work, cars, factories and general pollution. For the sake of my lungs, I'm hoping it's just the weather.

Xiao and Yu leave today to go back to Shanhaiguan, so I meet up with them to see them off and yet again I'm in amazement at people's generosity and kind hearted spirit. Learning from my mistakes, I book into a hostel in both Xi'an and and Pingyao, so I definitely have places to stay when I arrive. I'm also amazed to find out that online you can get some ridiculous deals and I
basically pay about £1.80 for two nights in a hostel in Pingyao and £15 for five nights in Xi'an, wonderfully cheap. I've come to the conclusion, that if you don't visit the expensive tourist sites, then you can easily live for around £10-12 a day, including money to travel between the cities every couple of days.