Blogs from Beijing, China, Asia - page 450

Day 4 Today we started with a riksja-tour through the Hutongs, the old neigbourhoods. Two in each riksja cart. It was fun to get a tour like that. First stop was the Drum-tower. It was really big, but when the guide said the stairs we're good practice for the Great Wall, which we would visit the next day, everyone was a little bit concerned.... But about the drum-tower, we saw the drum-ceremony, which was ok. Nice to see it once. After that we had some free time to take pictures of the view and buy cards or souvenirs they sold there. After that we went to a small shopping street. I bought a wooden dragon there. Really pretty and very glad I bought it. The whole bargaining thing was getting better everytime I tried it. And ... read more

I think Beijing is wearing on me. It seems everywhere I go I am forced to behave like an animal in order to compete with the Chinese. Every morning outside the subway station there is this little corral that a huge crowd of people are to funnel through. What makes it even worse is that there are these policemen like guys in their berets yelling through megaphones, probably telling people to stay in line and not push. But all the same, it is like little pigs trying to get to the food, everyone pushing and climbing over top each other. On a more positive note, I finally got the go ahead from our hierarchical system at work and have thus started to send out emails to various law firms in the country and then eventually around ... read more

Part of our class today consisted of learning a Chinese song thats name translates as "A Flying Bug". I think singing songs in another language is a great way to practice that other language, because generally songs will stick in your head and you can develop your vocabulary with the lyrics that just flow with the music. It is also just nice to try different learning methods because three hours straight of just learning words is too much. A person needs to have repetition when learning a new language, and it is best when that repetition is in different forms. After class we went to a very posh coffee house. The restaurant was upstairs and featured nice couches on which you could chill. Since there were several of us, they gave us our own room where ... read more

The idea to book a holiday (it's been 5 years since my last one), came in september 2005. So after a few months of looking i decided to book a single trip. Most of my friends wanted to go with their boyfriends or just simply didn't want to go any further then Spain. I finally made the decision in december. It was a group of 14 people, all single, 4 guys/men and 10 girls/women. We had a great group. We met each other on Schiphol (Amsterdam Airport). After that we had a 2 hour flight to Helsinki, 2 hours of waiting, and a flight of 7 hours and 15 minutes to Beijing, China. There is a +6 hour difference from the Netherlands to China. With the flight times it was pretty horrible. We landed on Beijing ... read more

We decided to take a trip to the Temple of Heaven in the morning, since Brian had not seen it yet with his school group. It is one of my favorite sites because it is made of my favorite colors blue and green...see photos. We took the audio tour which was in my opinion a waste of money...I only half listened to the tape. After the Temple of Heaven we took a cab to the Silk Market...also known as knock off central. There were fake Gucci, Prada, Coach, Luis Vuitton, Omega, Rolex...you name it they got it. It becomes exhausting haggling with all the sales people. They grab your arm "Come see my bags, what kind you like? I got Luis Vuitton". You find something you like and they latch on like leeches! They start the ... read more