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Published: September 19th 2012
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Wednesday 12th September It all started almost a week ago when I left the sunny days in Sydney, no rain for the entire duration of my trip (15th Aug to 11th Sept). I was expecting to come to a smog filled city as depicted from the pre 2008 Olympic city documentaries or even some cloudy days but no, Beijing (formally Peking) turned on the glorious weather just as Australia did. I arrived at 5:50am to a barmy 22 degrees. After flying through customs and within 5 minutes I had my luggage and was greeted by a scared face well dressed Chinese man with a name plate that read "
Heath William", thinking that the odds of another person on my flight having a similar name to me I just said yep that's me. After all Chinese can't pronounce the "s" anyway. So off I go through the car park and get into his BMW looking black car. Now I start to think hhmm scar face, suit, black car.... Triad?? I get in destination my hotel and first thing I noticed is there are seat belts but the buckle is tucked under the seat as well as full back seat
protector sheets which make it impossible to use seat belts. In fact mu whole trip in all taxis there is no way to use the seat belts. After the reports I heard that the Chinese are the worse drivers (even worse than russians) I was glad I took out travel insurance including life insurance. The trip to the hotel proved the reports. People not using lanes as marked and undertaking on the gutter side of road where there in no road. They don't even use indicators, oh and if your horn is broken you might as well right it off as a trip in a car here is louder than a construction site.
So I arrived to the hotel safely and luckily I manage to check in at 7:30am. Go into room and have a kip for a few hours due to the not so good 12 hour air China flight. As I have no tours planned for the day I decided to leisurely see some sights as picked out from my lonely planet book. After walking some streets from the hotel i ventured towards "
Wangfujing Daije". The lonely planet book tells me "for shock the folks
back home food" that I should head to
Xiaochi Jie. How can i say no to taking a look? Pictures will come later but such things on offer here are the usual chicken or beef on a skewer dusted with some sort of spices. For the acquired tastes I also saw the following all on skewers... Star fish, small ALIVE scorpions, king black scorpions, crickets, some sort of larva and best of all HUGE FUNNEL WEB SPIDERS. call me picky but there is no way I would try any of these. They other thing I saw was funnily coloured boiled eggs. Not until a Chinese man bouht one I noticed it was a chicken embryo inside. I decided to leave the street after getting some boring beef skewers and head back to "
Wangfujing Daije".this street is a pedestrianised street full of mid end shops such as Zara, H&M and various souvenir shops. Whilst walking up the street taking in the atmosphere I had 20 to 25 year old women come up to me asking where im from and how I enjoy Beijing. Not being rude I responded to her questions as any other gentleman would do wandering if she would
be selling me something. She then asked me if I'd like to go with her and meet a friend of hers to the cafe and continue to talk English to help her improve her language skills. I knew something was fishy here and luckily I read up on the dangers of Beijing from my trusty book. It says male single travelling tourists should avoid such cases as the girls will order a drink which would have no cost marked on the menu and when getting the bill you would be charged over ¥1500 (= AUD $230 / £150). Then if you refuse to pay then the big boys will come out demanding you pay while the girls would act innocent. So with this knowledge I kindly refused and went on my way. This happened 4 times within the next 10 minutes. At this time night was approaching so decided to head towards the Olympic park area north of the City.
Once arriving at the Olympic Green as the Metro calls it I immediately notice that the Chinese are very proud of having had the Olympics. The venue is still full of tourists and locals trying to sell photos, flashing
toys, numerous kites as well as small replica gold medals. All the Olympic banners are still pinned around the venue also. After taking a few pics of the national stadium also named the birds nest and the swimming centre (water cube) it was time to call it a night.
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