A word of advice for anyone wanting to travel to Beijing: if you want to see the sites, don’t come during the first week of October. The 1st is a national holiday, and many of the locals take the following week off work to relax and visit all of the places that I’m trying to see. So the Forbidden City is massively oversubscribed, the queue for Mao’s mausoleum stretches into the hazy distance, and the buses heading out to the Great Wall are all fully booked.

So instead I spent yesterday wandering round the Hutongs, the alleyways and passages where many locals live. Having seen the more touristy selections on my last visit here in 2001, it’s a good choice.

Today will mostly be spent trying to replace the stuff that Air France buggered up.

And tomorrow? Well, I’m getting restless again. Time to move on. Where to next?

Hmmm. This looks interesting…

So I’ll be offline for the next week. If I haven’t posted again by the 16th, can someone please call the New Zealand Embassy? Thanks.