A luxury hotel and more food ...

We've just been away for the weekend to a very posh hotel outside of Beijing. It is where the Prime Minister, other ministers and their minions go to relax at weekends. We went to visit the Great Wall (which really is a great wall!). We went up to it by cable car and came down a long slide/toboggan - really good fun.

We were then taken by our hosts to eat at a very delicious restaurant where they had amazing barbequed fish (Melissa's favourite food so far) then back to the hotel to swim, sauna and eat yet more food. We had foot massages, facials (me and Hong Wei), the men and kids played games, skittles, shooting, video games and others. I even had my hair dyed - it's now an interesting shade of dark greeny brown!!!

So much luxury - we really haven't had chance to miss any home comforts yet - except for a bath. The coffee's not great (except in Starbucks) but we can buy cadburys and galaxy ("dove") chocolate everywhere - and we do! Last time I came here there was none of that - I had a complete break from those particular addictions. The food is wonderful and awful at the same time - some delicious food - fresh, varied and lovely, there seems to be no end to the variety of ways that tofu can be served (some nice and some not) and lots of lovely veggies (thank goodness) and loads of different fish dishes. But there is so much else - we went up a little street today and saw kebabs of many things including snake, scorpian (live), beetle, hearts, squid etc - I felt sick and had to come away - Mark bravely bought a chicken kebab which was delicious apparently - even the little egg balls that I liked the look of had squid inside!

I find that I am very squeamish and a great dissapointment to our hosts who would like to show us all of the vast variety of foods that this country has to offer - Rosa is even worse and lives mostly on egg fried rice! Thank goodness we have Mark with us who will at least try most things (even cow stomach and sea cucumber) and Melissa is being very game about trying new things and has eaten a quantity of new vegetables.

Missing friends and family, especially when we see something that I know some of you would like or that I would like to share with you. Hope you are all missing us too - but not too much - just enough to make some of you want to come and join us somewhere on the route.

- Heather