Ni hao Beijing

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Day one of Beijing began like day one of many of my city escapes, a disorganised wander through parts of the city where I'm not quite sure where I am or what I am observing. I started at the Qianmen markets where I bought an iced green tea imagining that would become invigorated and refreshed. Iced green tea is just cold green tea (duh) and therefore it tastes like piss (or at least similar to how I imagine piss would taste). Nevertheless it did still manage to invigorate a nearby pot plant. The rest of the market was just like any other tourist 'market' times a thousand. Asians love to shop and it seems they just can't get enough of cheap tacky mass produced 'souvenirs'. I did manage to find a place that sold hand made Tibetan goods and bought myself a nice bag. Unfortunately I had been converting the currency wrong and thought I was paying four times less for everything (turns out I'm only good at useless maths #rippedoff... facepalm) lucky it was a nice bag I guess. I had to get out of the main food area of the markets before I could eat, the smell of sewerage, dead animals in windows combined with all the crowds just wasn't making me hungry. At about three o'clock I found a small restaurant with a nice vintage feel. It was a humble old building and had black and white photographs of the city all over the walls. Here it seemed that it was acceptable to smoke inside restaurants and beckon in small dogs from the street and feed them your left overs.

After this I planned to go somewhere else and see some stuff... ok so not really a plan. I had heard that the 'Lama temple' was something to see and it was reasonably close to my hostel so I thought I would check it out. Well I got to Lama temple station expecting I would be able to see the lama temple- like inside the wall that surrounded it. I could see the roof the of what I gather was the temple but I will never really know. Instead I ended up at 'The temple of the Earth', this is where people came to pray and give sacrifices to the god of the earth- who as far as gods go sounds like a pretty good one. Here there was a huge park where I saw some solo yogo'ers and groups of old people playing cards- adorable. It's nice that there's some greenery in city, I otherwise feel out of touch from nature, (including fresh air), here.

After a long day of walking I am need of lengthy sleep, zia jian!

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