Hanoi – London – Beijing

On the way back to Hanoi, I stopped for two days at a place called the Boat Landing in Muang Sing, it was a beautiful peaceful place and it was raining. An American man lives there and works as a marketing consultant to promote tourism in the area, he was talking to one of the guides and singing the words to a local song in English. He said "when it rains, I think of the future". It set me thinking about what I would be doing when I got back to London and for some reason I just had a strong desire to go home for a visit, so I did. When I got back to Hanoi, I booked a flight to London and came home to beautiful warm sunshine, buses with a timetable and a soft seat, not have to bargain over the price for everything, M&S underwear and all currency that made sense to me. I checked my bank statement and found that what I thought was a quite large sum in Vietnam (220,000 dong) had cost me £8.50. Thank god for a strong pound, it’s a good time to go travelling.

Once back it was good to see old friends and catch up, there was a production in rehearsal at the Mary Wallace theatre and they needed an assistant stage manager to help out back stage so I volunteered and it was good to be involved in something while I was here. I had time in London to plan out the next stage of my journey, London to Beijing for some sightseeing, then on to Mongolia for a tour in the Gobi desert then two weeks volunteer teaching in Tibet. After that, maybe Nepal if the situation there has settled down and then India and if I can a job working for JPM in one of the offices in India either Mumbai or Bangalore.

Itinerary:
26 May: Arrive Beijing
27 May: Private guide to Forbidden City in the morning with Tianamen Square. Summer Palace in the afternoon . Lunch at the Dazhaimen Restaurant28 May: AM private guide for visit to Confusious & Lama Temple in Beijing . PM at leisure 29 May: Transfer to the Great Wall at Jins hanling - walk with guide to Simatai, around 12km return to Beijing.30 May: Day at leisure -Overnight in Beijing31 May: train to Ulaan Baator,Mongolia
1 June: Arrive UB - meet with Nomads Tours in Mongolia
Beauties of the Gobi tour
16 June: Return from Beijing
17 June: Transfer from Saga Youth Hostel to the train station for train to Chengde, Qiwanglou Hotel for one night
18 June: Return train to Beijing.
19 June: flight to Chengdu to obtain work permit for Tibet
21 June: flight to Lhasa to begin two weeks placement as volunteer English teaching assistant in a local school