Sunday 2nd August Beijing

---

Sunday 2nd August Beijing
Our last day, how did that happen, we are looking forward to settling in Australia for a bit and unpacking the bags but I know we will miss it all when we do. We relaxed for a while and packed up most of our things, the bags haven’t grown that much considering since Dublin airport 4 months ago. It was time to throw away the crap t-shirts and rags we picked up in Cambodia and the likes, don’t think we’ll be wandering around Sydney in our Angkor Watt shits. We headed back down to the shopping street near the square to buy shoes to go with Mary’s suit and we knew of some ok tack shops there where we were finally going to buy some chopsticks and the like.

We had everything bought in an n hour or so, so headed back to not be too rushed for the beginning of our epic journey. We picked up our bags and took a cab to the train station, I could think of nothing worse than trying to maneuver those lumps of bags on our backs, fronts and sides in one of those subways and for some reason over here they don’t believe in escalators in Beijing underground. Also the locals eyes would nearly pop out they would be so amazed by you. Beijing South Station is fabulous though, it’s like a beautiful new airport. Armchairs, bars, shops. You can see the mark of the Olympics all over it, our train arrived right on time and it only took 30 minutes to travel through a 120km of industrial factories on either side to get to Tianjin. Our hostel worker in Beijing had done us well and her scribbles directed the taxi driver straight to our hotel. The hotel was very nice, a typical chain hotel again, good price though and comfortable. The minibar stocked some funny items though, I don’t think all the guests are here to sleep with the variety of accessories they had available.

We headed out for something to eat and really were thrown once again back into the heart of regular China; we were stranded in the land of the blank stare while asking for a Caidan Anglais. Its kind of infuriating here, you say it in Chinese and it sounds almost right like saying Lime rick or something and they don’t have a notion, if they do kop it eventually they shift one letter half an octave and then its perfect for them. NO joy here though in about 3 places so we chose a place that looked half normal and tried to order from our lonely planet book and a sample menu that Brian had given us. Now I know this is mad in itself, like walking into a restaurant at home with a menu from another place and saying I don’t care, just cook it. But you would expect them to have something similar, like fried chicken or something, but no. It took about 30 minutes with the help of a nice man with limited English to translate to get us green beans, chicken and rice. Not the most pleasant last supper really. We walked back to the hotel and set our alarms for our 6am departure

---