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Published: April 24th 2006
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Waking up on my cozy mattress on the living room floor I have some vague memories of seeing Joanne rush off to work. Unsurprisingly that is exactly what transpired a good few hours earlier, so I think nothing of it and go back to sleep again. Kay and I aren't exactly known to be early birds but we are fit for fight around noon and grab a taxi outside to head over to the New Century Hotel tower in the northwest where Joanne's office is located. Kay will be on the plane back to Bangkok later this afternoon so we take the opportunity of one last meal together. There is a very nice Cantonese style restaurant in the hotel tower where the three of us meet up with Michael who also lives nearby. We feast on dumplings, pork ribs, salad, chewy chicken feet and those tasty Hong Kong style meat filled buns I just can't resist.
We still have some time before I will see Kay off to the international airport so the two of us go on a short trip to the northern Hutongs in the Drum and Bell tower area, but before that I manage to get lost
in the subway. It is annoying that you cannot walk through the stations to reach the other exit without gaining access to the platform and thereby paying the token 3 yuans. For the uninitiated, the hutongs are the old style buildings of old times, the type of narrow alleways and one or two story houses that are rapidly being bulldozed away to make room for the expanding towers of concrete and glass that signify prosperity and ambition. The immediate area around the two towers is crowded with pedicabs and their drivers standing around waiting for customers, but just a few blocks to either side and life goes on in its normal drab and peaceful way. I've come to appreciate this area more and more, just to catch people going about their business.
We have to leave almost as soon as we got here and ride a taxi back to the flat to pick up the bags and head to the airport. After seeing Kay off I head over to the airport bus counter and purchase a ticket back to Dongzhimen. There is no way in hell I will ever get back into an airport taxi no matter how much
the situation may have improved since last year. The bus stops at two locations before terminating at the Dongzhimen bus station and subway station and I hang around a bit watching all the busy commuters rushing past poor street vendors offering food stuffs in the middle of the stairs leading to the subway platform. There is only one more thing for me to do in Beijing before I am about to leave myself. As Joanne goes off work she comes by and picks me up and we drive to east side of the city, Chaoyang district to be precise. This is where we have agreed to meet with Ju and Jörgen for a dinner at a place called The Loft. To my big surprise it is a Thai restaurant, and it has an absolutely divine range of dishes. Little did I expect to have delicious Tom Yam soup in the middle of winter. I met Ju on the plane back home from Beijing last year on one of her many trips to Sweden and we've kept in touch since then, so it was fun to meet up again.
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