Beijing bonkers

We lost eight hours on the flight over, many hours of sleep, and all my bank cards. We quickly learned some fancy interprative dance moves, which we executed with gusto on airport security, who kindly jumped in a bus and retrieved my purse from underneath seat 44G. Elated and excited, we jumped straight onto the metro.

Beijing is not what we expected. It is full of colour, kindness, and adventure. The streets are, for the most part, single-story old-fashioned street vendors; a mixture of vibrant 10 yuan (£1) tat stores, old world tailoring shops, 1950s department stores and a myriad of food stalls. No hassle, no haggling, no heckling – just welcoming smiles and excellent dumplings. And all of your cat-in-a-basket needs met.

Communication is undertaken via Google Translate – no one really speaks English with any fluency and it is quite normal and accepted to be using a smartphone as the middleman.

Although China is officially an atheist country and found an awesome Taoist temple

A particular highlight for me was testing out our Smart Loo which not only has a warmed seat and remote control, but also ejects an exciting and exacting jetstream of warm water right up your undercarriage

We toured around the city tonight to see the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, built in 1272 during the Yuan Dynasty as a central time keeping structure; a public clock to the city.