Beijing, China

Hey everyone,

How's it going? We are now in Beijing, having crossed by train into China about 4 days ago. It was pretty neat, we took local trains (as opposed to one international train that most travellers take) and so got to stop in a couple towns that probably have never seen tourists before. Got to learn to count to ten (in Chinese, we know how to count to ten in English, we're math majors) in some restaurant with the whole family helping out. Gave them a Canadian flag pin for that...

So today we just got back from the Great Wall. We camped there over night, at Simitai (about 3 hours from Beijing). It was way cool, first we had to climb up the wall, it's in a non-touristy condition, so quite dangerous in parts (climbing up 75 degree slopes with a tent on your back ain't easy...) but well worth the effort. After about 2 or so hours, we reached the tower that we camped in along with 5 other people we had met in the hostel earlier. It was amazing, as the sun set in the west the moon was rising in the east, I couldn't decide which way to look... as if that wasn't enough, a gentle cloud cover passed in front of the moon. It's enough to give a guy inner peace, and I haven't even got to Nepal yet.

After mastering the Cyrillic script, we are now onto Chinese characters. We know about 10? so far, at this rate by the year 2013 we will know enough to read a newspaper.

So back to Mongolia for a sec... It appears that we only talked about the problems we had on our trip. Lotsa good stuff happened too:

Mongolians are amazingly polite and curious and helpful. (There's no thesaurus on this thing). I think it's cause the borders have just recently been open to tourism, and so we're the first wave. (Sullying the place up for future travellers.) We went to sand dunes in the Gobi over 100m high, and the edges on them were perfectly crisp... unlike some that I went to in Chile, which were amazing in themselves, but there was major evidence that you weren't the first one there... Our guide even took us to a Ulaan Baatar disco after our trip (everyone was watching us as the official dance gurus cause we were from the west, (and Gerry's from Strathroy, Ontario for crying out loud))

Local Customs (Mongolia):

- Drinking fermented milk of various milk-producing animals (camel, horse, mare, goat, sheep...) I kinda liked it after a while, Gerry got gas

- Living in Gers... as nomadic people they move around a lot and so live in portable tent-like things that they can move in about 7 hours. (as former co-op students we can appreciate this)

- Brewing home-made vodka... first round of which each person must skull (that means drink it all for you non-Aussies) an entire glass. This one we're bringing home

Toilet Update: (Mongolia)

- Gerry writes 'In the open air baby... well for 8 days at least' Otherwise it's a mix of fully functional toilets, toilets placed over holes in the ground, or just holes in the ground. But the toilet paper has improved immensely from Russia. (quite impressive for a country with few functional toilets.)

See you soon from Xi'an (that's in China)

Love Eric and Gerry (or Gerry and Eric)