Beijing

Asia » China
September 11th 2008

Published: September 11th 2008

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matt and yoli

Beijing new terminal

After arriving at beijing we had slightly overlooked the fact that the address of our hotel was written in english, which unfortunatly didnt go down well with the chinese taxi driver! thankfully an english chap came to our rescue translating the text into chinese for the taxi driver.

once on route both yoli and I were relieved (to say the least) that we werent hiring a car here, talk about crazy! cars, bikes and people pritty much going wherever they wanted!

After arriving at our hotel we pretty much had a full day ahead of us as it was only 10.30am. We thought despite being shattered we would go and do some sight seeing at the forbidden city. Of my god! How big was it? After getting caught in the rain with out umbrllas or jackets (Matt in a pair of shorts aswell) we grabbed a taxi to go and see the olympic stadium. Unfortunately you need a ticket to just get into the grounds so we only managed to see the birds nest and the water cube from afar. There were people selling visitor tickets ourside but we didnt know if they were real or not and we

Beijing terminal - rail link

also hadnt been to the cash point machine to get some cash. That was pretty much it for our first day in Beijing we were so tired that we just grabbed some grub at our hotel and were asleep in bed by 7.30pm, part animals ay!

Our second day came with an early start! We were picked up to start our tour day out to the Ming tombs and the great wall of China. Our tour guide called Frank and his driver, Mr John (Chinese men who spoke English) picked us up from outside our hotel and we started our trip picking up some other people on the way. Met some guys from Australia who told us a few places to visit here in Beijing as they had been here for 8 days already, it was there last day here and they were off to Tokyo the following day. We also had a stub in our group. Not sure of his name but he was an actor from Mexico, well thats what he said he was. It was an apsolutely scorching day and he wore (to climb the great wall), black boots, tight black trousers and a red shirt

"Welcome to Beijing"

that had no buttons so you could see his not so attractive chest! he was sat in front of us on the bus and he kept combing his hair every five minutes.

The wall was apsolutely fantastic and to my surprise i did actually make it to the highest tower of the Badaling stretch of wall, tower 8 which sat at approximately 900m above sea level. We took some fantastic photo's but unfortunaltly we can not add any until we get to Australia as the computers are all in Chinese and we dont know which buttons to press!

Sampled some Pekin duck at a restaurant last night which was recommended by Frank our tour guide during the day. It was good but we have to say a little dissapointing. As well as recommending the restaurant Frank gave us directions to the Beijing panda zoo where we went today.

Saw the pandas at the zoo today, didnt realise how luthargic they were. Aparently they are only awake for 4 hours per day. Got some cracking photos of them and other animals including 2 elephants humping, it was quality, one of those moments where you really had to be

Forbidden City

there!

Gunna take it easy this eveing and get an early night, we travel to Hong Kong tomorrow and our taxi will come and get us at 5.30am, rubbish! Luckily Hong Kong is the same time zone so we dont have to adjust again to soon.

Additional photos below

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