Longtan Park

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Hello everybody!

I had great plans to go out to a place called Badachu, which means "Eight Great Sites", where there are 8 old Buddhist temples and a few other awesome things. But we didn't go for a few reasons. Mostly because we didn't wake up in time, but also because it's supposed to be a great place to go to escape the dirty air of Beijing, and as it turns out, it was a beautiful day today, so instead we went to Longtan park, near the Temple of Heaven.

On the way we stopped at the Pearl Market, which is literally just across the road from the Temple and is pretty famous for being a great place to get rip-offs of most things, as well as little gimmicky souveneirs and, oddly enough, pearls. The pearls are supposed to be really good quality and incredibly cheap, although you have to be careful of course because there are always exceptions, but there are hundreds of stalls and they're over three levels, so the chances of finding something that you like are pretty good. If you're a woman. If you're a man, you're probably contemplating suicide. But there is an end in sight so it's not so bad, and in one of the pearl shops you get a great view of the temple of good harvest in the Temple of Heaven, so it's a nice place for that.

It's not a good place for people who have personal space issues. The sales people come and grab your arm, yell at you, stand in front of you and block your way, and generally act ridiculously - which I gave up trying not to laugh at after about 5 minutes. And they think calling out "Hey Lady" was going to get Sue's attention. BUT, if you close your eyes and walk down one of the aisles, it's very much like being awake through a nightmare, especially in the pearl section - there's all these people, like 5 or 6 at once, saying "lady, would you like some pearls", and it lasts for about 30 seconds - it's kind of creepy if you stop and think about it!

So we got out of the shop eventually and started walking towards the park, which was a bit further away than I thought, and a little less interesting than I expected. There was a lot of empty stall set up though, so I get the feeling it would be a much more interesting place to go if it was on a weekend. I might see if I can test that theory, but we're running out of time a bit really.

After that, we went back to Wudaukao for some food, and I met up with Lloyd to have some dinner, the girls had something to do at home. We went to a sports bar, about 20 minutes after happy hour, and somehow, Lloyd, in his sandy-haired western cutsie way convinced the manager to let us have happy hour anyway, and then she kind of liked us, so she got us a nice meal and gave us VIP cards and everything. But the best bit about it all was that there was cricket on the big-screen. Just heaven.

That's about all we got up to really, not a massive day, although it took up the whole day and I was completely wrecked when I eventually got home.

Hope everybody's well at home.

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Photos

Panda Love
Susie has a new friend.

Wedding pics
There was at least 5 lots of wedding pics being taken this day

Dragons!
The lake was full of stuff for the 60th anniversary

Not us
We met a couple that looked exactly like us at the park. It was uncanny.

Big thing
nondescript nature

Look closely
There's a cat in the drain pipe and they are her kittens in front. Sue made that noise she makes when she sees kittens and puppies

The kittens
Perhaps not in the best of health, but Sue touched them all the same...

Comments

[garrett]

beer buddy i need