As usual, we are eating a lot of McDonalds. We have tried Chinese food, but I’m not a big fan even if I cook it myself. We tried a Chinese restaurant which was full of locals, and chose from a recipe which included stir fried donkey, bullfrogs with chilli, pigs intestines, fish heads and so on. We had beef, but to be honest it did not taste like the beef we get in NZ. Was it beef? I don’t know!

We then went to Haagen Dazs and had luxury ice creams -see pic (sorry about the colour – Colin wanted to try his phone camera – it’s chocolate)- to take the taste away!

Our tour guide to the Great Wall took us to couple of Chinese restaurants, they were OK, but it’s all very samey and chop sticks make it hard work. I went to the loo, there were a bunch of oldish (my age) English women in there, whining about the food, wishing they could have fish and chips; the toilets – you can’t put paper down them, they keep a bucket beside the toilet. Maybe they should have gone to Blackpool!

I am now completely OK with croucher toilets. I realised that most public toilets in NZ and the UK are crouchers, just higher up! Who doesn’t hover over them anyway? If I can do bush toilets, and post-earthquake buckets, I can use a croucher. And I’ll never forget coming out of an Australian bush toilet, and someone saying “did you see the snake in the rafters??” I wouldn’t like to have constipation though, I haven’t got the muscles for that. Also, I must admit the automatic flush croucher had me worried, I was just hoping the water wouldn’t come over the top and wet my trouser legs before I moved!

We have been to the Silk Market for shopping. Have bought another 4 pashminas this time paid only 160Y for the four. Also got two Gucci watches, a silk T-shirt and two designer leather bags! The bags were about $30 each, just couldn’t resist at such a bargain price. Colin got a man bag to keep photographic filters in. He is too soft with the haggling! I find it a bit tedious. I wish they would just put a price on and keep quiet, let me look around in peace. However I did see similar leather bags today in an upmarket mall for 1200Y each – divide by 5 to get NZ dollars.

Yesterday we went to the Forbidden City.

This afternoon we are going to the Summer Palace and then to the Olympic Stadium. Tomorrow, we leave Beijing.