Beijing is huge with streets that go on forever and our week there was spent getting used to the public transport system. We are now officially the Queens of the Beijing bus service. On our first night, we tramped along sidestreets looking for a half decent restaurant. We came upon this really cute little place on a street near the Forbidden City and experienced our first chinese beer - Yanjing beer. We fell in love with the diced chicken and peanuts and we returned there the following night for more of the same for less than $3.00. On the way home, we chatted up the elderly man in the Ice Cream shop and we gave him all our Korean change.Lor offered him a pound coin and the poor man nearly killed us with kindness. His friends pushed us on to seats and we chatted using a chinese phrasebook. The only thing I could get my tongue around was ‘Are you married?’ They roared with laughter at my ‘suggestive’ tone and kept staring. We left shortly afterwards. Exhaustion was setting in. It takes forever to get anything done in Beijing unless you hop into taxi after taxi. We seemed to spend day after day organising the next part of our trip. It was odd!! We signed up with the chinese Bord Failte effort of a tour to the Great Wall on Saturday and god, what a circus that was!! It reminded me of a Connemara bus tour stopping off at every possible craft shop , trying to milk the tourists. It was like that only ten times worse. We were pulled at to buy crappy T-Shirts and dodgy looking silk products. We got our tourist shots of the Great wall, climbed back on the bus and hoped that the day would end quickly.

The dream of getting the Trans-Mongolian to Ulaan Baater and sleeping with the tribes in the Gobi Desert was somehow becoming just that. It seemed difficult to get tickets and we didn’t have ten days to spare. Mongolia will have to wait for another trip. Instead, we decided on Vietnam and organised a visa with the embassy there. That was another days work and we weren’t impressed with their security Guards powertripping attempts. Strangely enough, his face relaxed and he smiled happily when we told him we were from Ireland.

“Irla very good” “Irla very good”!!!!

On Monday I talked to a Co.Meath woman, Louise Leonard on the phone. Louise lives and works in Shanghai now but she worked in Connemara for a few years. She gave me a few numbers to help me in organising a flight to Shanghai and I got talking to a Graham Allan. Director of Marketing with the Great Wall Sheraton in Beijing, I was stunned when I heard that he had lived in Clifden for about ten years and had owned the Celtic Hotel. Madness!!!! We chatted for ages and discovered that he was best man for Ronnie Miller and still has a share in the Golf Club. He mentioned that he had bumped into a Clifden guy, Pat O’Toole, last week in Beijing. Seemingly he works for Motorola in a city two hours from the capital. I had an immediate flashback to disco nights in Clifden House and friends chatting about Clifden boys. Hard to believe it really!! The funny thing is that there was more of this connecting with home to come. Before leaving Beijing on Wednesday, we took off to the french bakery that had sustained us all week. We ended up sharing croissants with a woman who had had an Aunt in Kylemore Abbey - Sister Ita. Her Nieces had been in school with me and she has a friend in Sutton who is a second or third cousin of my dads!!!!! Totally bizarre!!!!! This is turning into a Grand Tour of Ireland on the Orient!!!

After a week of getting lost on buses, walking up and down Tiananmen Square imagining the events of 1989, getting stressed out over the constant staring and having fits about the amazing architecture of the Forbidden City, we were on a China Air flight to Shanghai!!

We’re here two days now and having a blast. Louise has been here two years and has contacts everywhere.She is an amazing lady, fluent in Chinese and one hell of a business personality. We went to a party last night and are recovering this morning! It was brilliant craic!!. We ended up in ‘Tequila Mama’s’, swigging back the beers and dancing with the locals. I somehow got into a dancing routine with one of the Shanghese and was so impressed with his dancing ability that I nearly went to his place for lessons. !!!!BUT I didn’t!!!!!!!!!

Sunday will see us on a Hard Sleeper Train to Wuhan and from there, we’ll take a Ferry down the Yangtze River. A few days with the rats and the mice will be fun!! By next week, we’ll be nearing our final destination in China, Yunnan Province. More about that later!!

I’m not feeling the Mae West but sure I’ll sort myself out before tonight.!! First stop? The Irish pub, O’Malleys!!!!!

Hope all is well in Clifden and the Pony Show was as entertaining as ever!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll catch up with you in Hanoi

Until next time,

Ita

"In Beijing three days and just about settling into the swing of things."
(15 Aug.)

"And so I leave Korea..."
(12 Aug.)

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