Blogs from Wangfujing, Beijing, China, Asia

Wednesday, 24th April 2019 The rainy weather in the morning presented an ideal opportunity to visit the Capital Museum, a short metro ride from where I stayed. The modern building is a delight to visit with plenty of spaces to maneuver around. However, the sparse exhibits were nothing to shout about which was a shame considering the generous size of the museum space. Anyway, this is a good space to while the hours away while waiting for the rain to stop. I decided to opt for a Japanese lunch at Genki Sushi. Conveniently located at Oriental Plaza, it was right next to Wangfujing Metro Station. Back at home, Genki Sushi is always an institute of itself, perpetually crowded with snaking queues at any time of the day. It was nice to dine at the Beijing outlet ... read more

Yesterday I went clubbing. And by clubbing I mean I partied till I didn't feel homesick anymore. It was a very weird experience because I had never been to a nightclub in my life. Usually the partyscene is not really my thing. I enjoy having a drink with friends once in a while but I rarely go anywhere I can't hear what other people are saying. Before we entered the club, we decided to grab a drink at a cafe located in a touristic street. It seemed a stripclub, but after like three minutes the stripper got the hell out of there and three guys took her place. They whipped out their karaoke kit (the Chinese really dig karaoke) and started singing Chinese lovesongs. It was actually way more entertaining, but a surprising twist nonetheless. When ... read more

Today is a travel day for us. Leaving beautiful Hong Kong behind, we are heading north and inland to the Capitol of China, Beijing. At 10am our car picks us up from the Marriott and we head out to the Hong Kong Airport. As we leave the hotel we immediately hit bumper to bumper traffic as the streets around the government offices are still closed as the peaceful student sit-in continues with them living in tents on the main streets. It takes us about 20 minutes to clear the downtown and head for the bridge to Kowloon. We cross Kowloon Island and take another bridge to Lantau Island passing the Disneyland turn-off to Sunny Bay, and off to the left, we enjoy seeing our crystal cable car from the day before. We leave Lantau Island, crossing ... read more

Sorry for the late update, but we've been crazy busy here now that we're with the karate group. So, today we've decided to venture out on our own and do a bit of shopping, we've decided to go the the Silk Road Market, this place is quite the contrast to where we are staying where we can go downstairs and buy a 90k watch and a 45k cellphone. Silk Road is known for there counterfit items, and Wes has been asking for a couple of months to get a fake Rolex, so we're gonna try. We're lucky that to get there we only have to go 4 stops on the subway here. I've seen videos of how busy they can be here, so we head out with caution. A really good thing is that subways here ... read more

After all the preparation, packing and learning the languages I have now arrived in Beijing at the start of my three week trans - Siberian trip. My rucksack weighed in at a respectable 19.5kg, including 3kg of pot noodle and go ahead bars. The flight was uneventful and I will leave it at that. I landed at 5am and it took a further 25 minutes for the plane to finally come to a stand still! What a huge airport. I took a taxi to my hotel which I was pleased and relieved to see actually had two stars, twice as many as I was expecting. The taxi driver made 13 calls over the 31.1 km we travelled, on at least four occasions he said 'uk' and I thought I was on the verge of being kidnapped. ... read more