Join the tour

I woke late today and slowly tidied up my things and checked out of Leo Hostel. I walked to the hotel to join the tour for the rest of China and arrived very hot and sweaty.

At the hotel I bumped into a quiet but very friendly Danish couple, Kim and Bridget. They were also on the tour and were a bit confused about when it actually started. After looking around the hotel to find evidence of the tour we finally found a notice stating that a meeting would take place at 6, so we decided to head out to a park and then grab the subway to the Lama Temple.

The subway was very easy to use and cost 3 yuan for a one way ticket. The Lama temple was impressive and had a huge towering Budda figure that was in the Guiness book of records for being the biggest statue carved out of a single piece of wood.

Later on we met up with the whole tour group and went to an amazing restuarant which cost 27 yuan each (less than 2 UK pounds) for more dishes than we could eat and a couple of beers. On the subject of beer, it costs about 2 yuan (28p) in a shop in the Hutongs. In many places a bottle of water is more expense that the beer.

All of the people in the tour group seem really nice and I think I've been quite lucky with the mixture of people. Although strangely (for the people that know me) I'm finding myself one of the louder members of the group.