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Hi all. At the moment we're in Hong Kong and its great to be back here. We've decided that we think it's just like London, but more sparkly and exciting - and everything is open later. However we're not really supposed to be writing about HK in this blog - this is meant to be about our final days in Beijing. The issue with this is that we're now away from Beijing, and in our last days of the trip to SEA, so we are suffering slightly from Blog Lag - we're just so keen to get home for our lovely visit!
Beijing, on the whole, for us, turned out to be just OK. We had an interesting enough time, and enjoyed the activities we undertook, however we were hogged with that stupid cold, and the weather was insuffereably humid and muggy. It's a real dirty place too, the air is generally thick, gray and soupy and you really get the impression that you're breathing in some major toxins. I'm trying to remember what we did in the last couple of days we had there..... We didn't actually do that much. We visited the Lama temple, which was certainly beautiful,
but to us, the older style buildings all started to look so simliar after a while that it was a little difficult to keep our interest levels up. You'll be able to tell this from the photos we took and posted here. There are some parts of the Lama Temple for example that look a lot like areas of the Forbidden City. This blog is definately going to be a short one - I think we might just do some bullet points:
1) The Lama Temple is located in central Beijing, conveniently on one of the subway stops (Yonghehong).
2) It's the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist Temple outside of Tibet.
3) Within the Temple is the largest standing wooden Buddha in the world. It's 55 foot and made of sandalwood.
4) We've decided that we don't want to visit anymore temples, because it's such a strange thing to go into a place of worship and hang around conspicuously taking photos & gawping while people are praying. It just feels wrong.
5) China has the lowest priced Big Mac anywhere in the world. Comparitively speaking it costs approximately US$1.30 for the burger, as opposed to around
US$3.50 in the UK. So if you're skint and 'Chinese fooded out' you know where to go.... You can't get a Quarter Pounder with cheese though - the alternative is a double cheeseburger and frankly it just tastes the same anyway. I know I'm going nuts on the Macdonalds front here, but one last thing to say is that the spicy chicken wings from McDs are the best chicken wings bar none that we have had, anywhere, ever.
6) Taxis are a nightmare. We gave up trying to hail one after our third attempt. There's this big rigmaroll whereby you say the name of where you want to go, and the driver screws his face up and shakes his head. Next you show him in Mandarin writing from your book where you want to go and he takes his specs off and screws his face up even further. After this you get your map out and combine the speaking / showing thing in the hope that he'll work out where you want to go - but he doesn't. So you get out the taxi into the rain, feeling hacked off and proceed on foot to your destination or to
the nearest tube station. If you do manage to explain where you want to go then the next hurdle is managing not to crash. Yes, our advice is that you avoid taking taxis in Beijing. The only thing that'll happen is that your blood pressure will go up considerably.
7) Kids in China are gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful and cute. The wee ones wear their trousers with big splits up the bum and no nappies so that they can go poo poo/ pee pee anytime, anyplace, anywhere, when nature calls.
Think that's about it (can't be bothered writing anymore today). Will catch you all soon in a final
short Honkers blog at some point next week before we head off to the sunny, non muggy Europe.
Bye for now,
A&S. xx
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Vik
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You've made the big time
You're on the front page of travelblog!! Fame beckons : )