Beijing, City of the 2008 Olympics, site of one of man's greatest achievements - The Great Wall, and home to, yet another, appalling British Airways Office. Another 2 1/2 hours to re-route - another charge (for doing nothing) and to top it off an additional 15 quid each just for the priviledge of being in China - welcome to the Communist (read Capitalist) state of China...anyhoo have written to BA about their appalling inconsistent customer service and should get some sort of response so will keep you informed.

RANT OVER. OK, well it's snowing here and it must be just about 0 degrees - a bit of a change from Hong Kong. We have booked our tickets onwards to Thailand (see above) and managed to get a really good deal on a flight to Krabi (worth noting we were in the Thai Airways office for less than 10 minutes) at under 40 UKP - the train is over 20 UKP and takes 15 hours...so we'll be back on the beach on 22nd April (we don't arrive until 6pm on 21st...) and should be diving by...oooh...the 23rd...

Last night we went for Peking Duck in, erm, Peking (Beijing's old name) and it was lovely, although very fatty. It tasted just like it does at a Chinese back home ;) although the Hoi Sin sauce was a bit dodgy and there was no cucumber...there are so many fantastic looking restaurants here but so few have English menu I will probably end up with one of the local delicacies (stir-fried tripe with kidney and heart...) or some meat that I really shouldn't eat...cat/dog etc...we're going to try one tonight especially as I now officially speak the lingo...

Tried my linguistic skills out on a taxi driver today and we nearly got to our destination before his engine blew up (quite spectacularly) and we had to push him...at least he didn't charge us. I must have been particularly good in the next one as the bloke started chatting to me as if I spoke the language...I just shrugged my shoulders, laughed, said, 'over there' and we arrived home safely...

Still got to book our tour to the Great Wall, which we will try to do tomorrow. We're hiring a couple of bikes tomorrow to go around the Forbidden City and to find a bloody tour company!! One thing that is interesting is that the Chinese Government just shut internet cafes (over 6000 were closed last year) and all the ones listed in the Lonely Planet are now not there (they've disappeared just like that bloke in 1989 - I'm writing this from the hotel). There is only one left in the whole of Beijing apparently (although we find this a little unlikely) and it is, I kid you not, in a gay bar! Maybe they don't think the gay community has it in them to revolt??!! Crazy crazy place - yet again you couldn't make it up... The Government also bans sites of a political nature so although we can edit our blog we can't view it...must have been my criticism of the NHS earlier this year - sorry Tony. We also can't view BBC news websites either and the press here is unbelieveably controlled - despite SARS fever (sorry poor pun) in Hong Kong (500+ cases now?) it wasn't even mentioned in the Chinese dailies...

Oh well, better sign off as it's pricey here; thinking about the placard tonight but don't fancy getting incarcerated/shot/squashed by a tank - if you read this please think twice about travelling on the one world ticket - it is truely awful and nowhere near as easy and flexible as they make out when you book it.

BA - the ball is in your court and we await your reply...