Beijing Beguiles...July 07

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Asian Odyssey
in appreciation of perspectives, people and places
Hi everyone,

Welcome to the first blog of this year's holiday : the "Asian Odyssey".

Well the trip over was smooth & uneventful...except when the pilot hurriedly told everyone to put on their seat belts (no explanation) after having told us earlier to expect bad turbulence over the phillipines....hurriedly complied, imagining a second instance of volcanic ash in the engines...but no worries after all and the panic settled down...needless to say Al slept through it all!!

Beijing has been busy, busy busy....and endlessly fascinating...Travelling on the subway and the buses in peak hour gave us many "close encounters of the crushing kind" - unbelievable how many packed into the bus we took to Shindu...2 hours of shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, cheek to cheek crouched/standing ...Al's 'friends' were at least young and well toned, although that wasn't much good..he still didn't get any offers. As for me....well an old lady offered me a very fragile, collapsible, 4 inch wide seat to put down in the middle of the carriage on the subway..I had to take the offer, but spent the whole hour with thighs screaming in pain and afraid the seat was going to break, and needing assistance to get back up!!

We have been to Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square, Behai Park and Shindu so far. They are fantastic - pix attached. Shindu was unbelievable and we had not seen any pictures or anything much about it prior to the trip. It is Beijings answer to the gorges in Guilin....incredibly similar and absolutely stunning!! The dam and gorges are about 40km out of Beijing - we went up by a dragon escalator to the top of the dam (around 60 stories high We think via 6 very very steep escalators built into the side of the hill) After we got to the top, we went on a boat ride through the gorges, passing under a trick cyclist suspended on a wire another 20 stories above the water, dangling a person under the bike!!). Then it was a trek to the top of the mountains to the buddhist temple - legs took some time to recover.

And food...what a feast for the eyes and mouth!!. We have tried some many wierd and wonderful dishes, we've lost count...Don't be surprised to see us eating raw beef and marinated ?????...with chopsticks when we come home!

On Tuesday we take off for Mongolia - 18 days straight camping...now that will be interesting (for a whole lot of different reasons, and we don't mean the food)

PS Have just tried to add the photos, but have been told that we can't do it (at least on this machine)...will need out check out whether its the same everywhere..will try again tomorrow in another cafe

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Comments

[Vanessa]

love it
lol trust Alan to sleep through that! Photos look amazing, need to see more!