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Published: September 19th 2007
Beijing 8/28/07-9/4/07 The flight in from Guilin wasn't bad at all. However, it was crazy to see the thick cloud of brown pollution that hovered over the city. I feared for my lungs. After we landed and got our bags (they made it again!) it was instant mayhem. The language barrier has really come into play here. Nobody speaks a word of English besides "Hello!!" We've resorted to pointing and chirades. The locals just look at us like we're crazy. We found our shuttle into the Xidan area and were again dropped off into the abyss. We found a cab that would take us to our hostel for 50 yuan..it should have been less than 20. We told him to piss off in so many words. We hopped into another cab and the driver gave the impression he knew where our hostel was and away we went. After some singing and some mumbling to himself, our driver seemed to be a bit confused. He looked at our makeshift map our hostel had emailed us, flipped it upside down, back to the right side up and looked out at the street signs with narrowed eyes. He decided we had reached our
destination and booted us out of the car...we had definitely not reached our destination. We proceeded to walk aimlessly through the alleyways, or hutongs as they're called here, with confused faces. A shop owner stepped out from behind his goods and pointed in the direction we had just come from...hmm. I whipped out the address of our hostel and he drew us a little map of where he thought it was. After a quick "che-che", we were on our way. Our backpacks seemed to be multiplying in weight exponentially with each minute that we wandered. Out destination was the "Red Lantern Hostel" and each time we saw a cluster of red lanterns we were sure our journey had come to an end. After a few, "There it is!...nope...just more freakin red lanterns" later we stumbled across the hostel...yes!
The city reminds me a lot of LA..very busy, very dense with people, and very trafficy. But, we have been relying on the buses and the subway. When you're not doing the driving, its not nearly as stressful sitting in traffic. However. when I say the city is dense, I'm talkin 200 people crammed on to a normal sized city bus and
Me and Mao
One of the last public portraits on display in Chinaabout 10 armpits in your face when your lucky enough to grab a seat on the subway. The sites here are awesome and theres so many to see. We went to see Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City, which is where the emperor lived with his 10,000 concubines. the Summer Palace was huge and awesome, except I didn't have the best time as my stomach was a bit angry with me for filling it with McDonalds (yes... I was tired and hungry and broke down and had a big mac), a burrito size spring roll I bought on the street, and spicy ass hot pot all the day before. Travel tip: I wouldn't recommend doing this. The Lama Temple was pretty cool as well. The highlight was many many buddha statues with the tallest being a 60 ft buddha carved out of a huge log and then covered with some bronze I think. But! By far, my favorite part of Beijing has been the Great Wall. Wow. We booked a tour through our hostel and were bussed out to Jiangshaling (sp?). After a 4hr. ride out, we were let loose on the wall. We trekked for 10km on the wall
all the way to Simatai. It was such a trip being on the wall. I kept saying "We're hikin on the Great Wall of China, the freakin Great Wall of China....we're in China!" It was on of those "Pinch me, I'm somewhere I've only read about in books" moments...
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