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Published: November 30th 2007
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My room
My bed is on the right. Visas and Train Tickets
So, yesterday I said that I was going to have an easy night and “definitely not as many beers”, well that went out the window as soon as I realized that my University results were released last night. So a few beers were had and then a few more and a couple more, and then we started on the local Chinese alcohol (No idea how to spell the name of it), which was…interesting.
While consuming these beers I met a few other people and one in particular stood out. Jeremy is a 20 year old Swiss guy who has to be the craziest person I have ever met. He left Switzerland and made his way to Russia, where he bought a car. He then drove his car to Siberia and headed down to Mongolia. When he got to Mongolia he sold his car and…bought a horse. He promptly rode his trusty little horse for 3 weeks through Mongolia before selling his horse and buying a bicycle and continued riding through Mongolia for another 2 weeks until he got to China. He has now headed off to Hong Kong and is going to make his way all
through South East Asia to India. Once in India he plans to build a boat to sail to Iran. Yes, build a boat, not buy, build. As I said he is crazy.
Anyway, we all headed out to a Korean BBQ, which was fantastic. More beers were had.
This morning, I had a headache and a sore throat, no idea why. So I headed to the local “remedy shop” to get something for my sore throat. Some sign language was done indicating my sore throat and I was promptly led to an aisle and handed a box of…something. The woman showed me that I was to have two now with water and then after that one a day. I went back to the hostel to have my medicine and discovered that it was in fact sachets of some powder which I assumed is to be mixed in water. I poured two sachets into my water bottle and took a sip, disgusting. So I struggled through it going on the adage that if it tastes that bad it must be doing something good for me.
After that I headed out, grabbed some brekky from a street vendor and
caught a taxi to the Embassy area to get my Uzbeki Visa. This time there were no hassles, I handed over my passport, letter of invitation (which is needed for Aussie residents) and my application form. The bloke disappeared for 5 minutes and came back with my passport and I paid him the money and got my visa. Too easy. Now, how do I get back to the hostel? I headed for the subway but after walking for 15 minutes realized that I had been going in the completely wrong direction. About face and on the subway and back to the hostel to catch up with a few people for a proper Beijing duck restaurant experience.
The restaurant was packed and rather fancy, which worried me as I thought it would be expensive. But I shouldn’t have worried. One duck which gave you four dishes was 68yuan, about $10AUD, between 3 people. It was the best tasting Beijing duck I have ever had, as you would expect. But the best part about the meal was the deep fried spicy bones of the duck that they served. I could have just eaten a huge plate of bones!
After that
I headed out again making my way to the Beijing West Train Station, catching two subway trains to get there, to get my train ticket to Xian for Monday. I got a hard sleeper ticket, requesting the middle bunk and paid 265yuan, about $40AUD.
So, I think that I have now done all of my organizing and over the next 2 days can do the remaining sights. I am hoping to get to the Great Wall tomorrow and if not it Sunday. But I have to catch up with the American guy Ryan as he was going to check out the tour situation and if he could put our names down for tomorrow’s tour. The tour is called the ‘Secret Great Wall’ tour and takes you to an unrestored part of the wall, that doesn’t have any hawkers and no tourist busses and so far I have heard very good things about it, starting with Hugo Butterfield and a few people from the hostel while I have been here. So I’m looking forward to that.
Not as many photos today as I didn’t really get up to that much.
As always, thanks for the comments.
Back
Soon.
Matt out.
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Peter Evans
non-member comment
Mystical Powder and Duck Bones
Must have been some weird powder you took to make you want another plate of deep fried duck bones, spiced or not. Great news that you are all set with your visas.