Planning a trip to China

Now that we've decided to leave Peace Corps early, we thought well dang, what are we going to do with our remaining vacation days we've collected? We thought of all the places we wanted to go.

Both of us really wanted to go to the Great Wall of China. We thought, what if we actually went?

We looked up tickets, oh Air China has a deal where we could both go from Bangkok to Beijing round trip for $900? Hot dang, lets do it. We got over the phone approval from our program managers and our country director and we booked the tickets. Less than an hour had passed since we thought of going there. Both of us are getting a bit better at the whole spontaneity thing.

We looked up cool things to do in China and looked up which cities they're in. 

We wanted to go to the Great Wall, the Olympic Buildings we heard were awesome, The Forbidden Palace, Tiananmen Square, The Summer Palace, and the Terracotta Warriors. All but the last one were in Beijing.  Fabulous! A friend of ours had just gone to China and suggested we stay a the Red Lantern House, so we booked it. 

Then we started looking up trains, and thanks to the amazingness that is seat61, we were able to figure out we could take night trains to and from Xian, where the terracotta warriors are and then we wouldn't need to pay for a hotel. 

I think we learned since almost all of our planning for Scotland went awry, that it's ok to plan some things last minute and be more spontaneous. 

So in less than a week we're headed to freaking China. I still can't believe it. 

Have you ever been to China? Have any last minute tips for us?