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Last day in the Ping Yao village. Tonight we get on another night train heading for Xi’an. Since Ping Yao isn’t that big, and we pretty much saw the most of it yesterday, today is dedicated to the art swedish “softing” and reading some pulp fiction (“Veien til Jerusalem”, also swedish)

Eating out in Ping Yao. Quite some menu…. When in Rome…. (NO WAY!!!)

First day in Ping Yao. Great little city with an intact city wall from the Ming dynasty. Lots of small streets with old buildings and people on their bicycles…. Small-town China it is. We have found a small guesthouse within the city walls, with an english speaking staff and a nice little room. Only drawback is that there is no tap water at all during the day, due to heavy work on the city’s piping system…. (Rumors has it that it will be water tonight) Still, it’s a pretty cool place to stay.

Right now we are situated in the top bed (third “floor”) on the night train from Beijing to Ping Yao. Last day in Beijing we saw the “Temple of heaven”, which was rather disappointing, and did some shopping at a crazy fake-market…. (Mari bought some pearls at a famous pearl-market) Ate at KFC and was pretty proud when we managed to get on the right train to the right time (Remember: everything is in chinese, and NO ONE speaks english…. Not even YES or ON)

Last ride in an Armored Beijing Taxi…. Øystein is riding shotgun, shit chatting in this strange language as usual, while Mari and me are getting ready to enter the rest of China on our own….

After 3 days in Beijing we will be heading towards “Ping Yao” tomorrow. Going by nighttrain in something called “Hard Sleeper” class…. Think that will be interresting.
After a coulpe of days in “Ping Yao” we will go to “Xi’an” and visit the Terracotta Worriers.

In Bejing we have visited “The Forbidden City”, “Tian anmen”, “Summer Palace” and “The Great Wall”. Tired after all this sightseeing, I think it will be great to go to “Ping yao” and to nothing for a couple of days…

We are hanging out on Øystein’s student restaurant after a long day at the “Summer Palace”.

Finally we have reached Beijing. We are living with Øystein in his spacey student room. Pretty none-tourist China it is. We however, are real Tourists. Yesterday we visited the “Forbidden city” and “Tianan men”. Today we head for “The Summer Palace” and tomorrow “The Great Wall” is scheduled. Since GPRS isn’t very common here…. blogging will be a little sporadic….

As always: Same, same…. But different.:)

After a rather bumpy ride in the Tupolev-Monster, we are now at Sheremetevo airport outside Moscow…. Here you can visit approximately 25 different Tax-free shops, eat in over priced restaurants and buy Babushka dolls for 9000 nok….

Coke tastes like it does in all other places on this world, people smoke everywhere, there is Red Hot coming from the loudspeaker in the cafeteria and there is no way in hell we understand a single word the people here say, even when it is supposed to be in english….

Perfect timing for consulting with our friend mr. LonelyPlanet on what to do tomorrow in Beijing.

We are on our way to China…. Miss Ekkje is enjoying her breakfast….

Part of getting ready to leave for China and Tibet is vaccination.

Luckily I got most of what I needed and only have to drink this stuff to prevent Cholera… Thats OK by me

Getting ready to enter the Peoples Republic of China…

Visiting the Chinese consulate in Oslo, applying for Visa to the Peoples Republic… Very interesting conversation with the woman behind the counter:

- Is this where I deliver the Visa application?
- ONE VISA IN EACH PASSPORT!
- ok…
- VISA BE READY FRIDAY. YOU PAY THEN!!
- ok… thank you!

Happy Shiny People of the Republic