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Published: April 14th 2009
Hello All,
So this will be the first of (hopefully) many posts along our 11 week journey through Asia!
After 24 hours of traveling, we arrived in Beijing and had to wait in a 30 minute line for a taxi at the airport. The taxi driver of course didn't have the slightest clue where our hostel was, and ended up driving around in circles talking on his cell phone for an extra 20 minutes. But alas, we arrived! Our hostel is in what is called a "hutong" which is a traditional Chinese alley. When we arrived there were 2 trucks blocking the very narrow street, so we ended up being dropped off a few blocks from our hostel, in the middle of a dark alley, at 130am. Just my kind of start to the trip!
Our hostel is a very typical hostel, we are currently in an 8 bed dorm. There are some really cool views of the older Beijing buildings from the roof and really beautiful flowered trees everywhere. This morning Jake and I woke up at around 530, after 3 hours of sleep. Megan and the others sharing our room were dead asleep, so we decided to go exploring the neighborhood. There weren't many people out, but some food vendors were just starting to set up for the day. I wanted to eat everything, but I had forgotten my wallet. We went back to the room and made it to the nearest bun stand at about 630. We shared 3 different kinds of buns, one filled with sweet beans, one with pork, and one with some sort of egg concoction! The pork was my favorite. I'm jumping right into street food on this trip, i figure my stomach is strong enough after 6 months in India.
After we finally woke Megan up around 9, we decided to rent bicycles for the day. (about $3 for the day). We got majorly lost trying to get to Tianannmen square, but thats all part of the adventure! We ate a delicious (but a little to pricey) lunch with a very bossy but wonderful waitress. After lunch Jake and I decided to try some candied fruit on a stick that we had seen people carrying all morning. BAD IDEA! The fruit was dipped in a sugar water mixture and allowed to harden. The one we got had kiwi and oranges. It looked SO GOOD but almost as soon as I took a bite I started gagging. I was really scared that I was going to throw up in the street. (this is all well documented and quite funny to look at). I'm not sure what it was about it, but something was definitely not right. Ah well, at least I tried.
Megan has already been solicited for a photo (due to her shiny blonde hair). All in all, the Chinese people are just as friendly and wonderful as I remember.
Almost everyone says "ni hao"... hello when you pass them and really enjoys when you ask them how to say different things in mandarin. We've made friends with the main girl who works at our hostel, shes attempting to teach us a few helpful phrases and likes to quiz us when we walk by.
Tomorrow we are going to the great wall!
<3 Moira (and Jake and Megan 😊)
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naila
non-member comment
well this is fun!
I'm quite enjoying waking up to your emails and blogs! the dark alley story is pretty funny and reminds me of some dark alley story you told me about india! ha! and the candy on a stick? hahaha. i bet i would have wanted to try that also and proceeded to take a huge bite..but kiwi and orange doesnt sound like the best mix. you should do one of these a day. they're fun.