Ulan Bator

We've arrived in Mongolia! Despite rumors to the contrary, there is no Blogger, Twitter or Facebook (horror of horrors) in Red China. So hurray for being back in the free world!

Our one day in Beijing was a lot of fun. We spent the morning walking around the Forbidden City. It was nice to see where all those treasures in the National Palace Museum in TAIWAN came from. I must say, the halls were a little barren in the Palace. And the audio guide failed to mention where all the cool, impressive Chinese art is hiding.

The palace itself was wonderful, though I had to fight off some old ladies to get a view of the rooms. Seriously, old Chinese women are shameless. Like if they don't see it RIGHT NOW they might die and never see it. S'ok - I'm good at throwing elbows too.

After the palace we walked over to Tiananmen Square. It's really big, but not much to see save for a people's statue outside the Mao mausoleum. We watched a soldier tell an old man to quit flying his kite in the square. That was about as exciting as it got. James said when he came to Beijing with his mom on a tour full of Taiwanese, they didn't even stop there, "Why would we want to go see a bad place like that?"

Pickled Mao was high on my list of sights to see, but unfortunately he's only available Tuesday through Sunday.

We ate dinner in the night market - delicious roast lamb skewers, a pancake sandwich and some other snacks. A guy tried to shiest us for some cream puffs, but we talked him down from 20RMB to ten (twenty is really outrageous).

The train was great, after we got here we finalized our Mongolia country tour, and we'll be headed out on that Saturday. I wont go into more detail now, because maybe I can find time to post entries with pictures later.

However, once I get back in China - it'll most likely be a blogless month, unless I can convince my mom to post for me via email...Hmm...

Sidenote: Because we've drank them all fairly recently - I can now say Taiwan Coke is different from Chinese coke which is different from Mongolian Coke. It's been so long since I've had an American Coke, I can't really tell you which is most similar. But they are different!