Pre-Beijing Trip & Beijing Day 1
The day leading up to the trip started off like any of my other days off, that is, I slept in and didn't go out much. I woke up and checked the Internet as usual and did a few things online. As time passed, excitement built with ever passing hour.
I soon realised that I had not even begun to pack my bag. I started to do this slowly throughout the day thinking I had plenty of time. The usual me, putting things off until the last minuet. Stoerm and I went out and did a few things that we needed to get taken care of. Went to a cafeteria style snack area on the 8Th floor of a building, but everyone was closed. We decided to just be done with it and eat McDonald's. It was okay, but not really what I was looking forward to. They, as usual, also messed up the order but in the end it was okay. I was looking forward to a chocolate Sunday afterwards, but they didn't have any chocolate so I passed on the notion of getting one of these. Stoerm had a weird green apple/vanilla ice cream cone... Said it tasted like one of those orange cream pops, but just with green apple instead of orange. Next we stopped by the cell phone shop and refilled our cell phones with minuets as I was running low. After all of this, we decided to go back home.
I begun to pack my bags, more excitement drew with every passing hour. Eventually that excitement turned into panic as I realised that I was running out of time to do everything I wanted. I had started to clean my room some, put my clothes in my closet instead of in the luggage bag I had brought from America. I was sweeping the floors and just trying to tidy things up. I finished packing with about an hour to spare. I bought a backpack at an army store that looks like it was made for travelling. Lots of pockets, weatherized material, places for water bottles on the side, small. I liked it a lot, I managed to get everything I needed in here. I also bought a small bag that I can sling over my shoulder where I kept my money and passport. The idea being that when we got our hotel room I could drop off the backpack and only take what I needed with the small bag and my pockets, thus reducing the amount of weight I needed to carry around. I then began to move all my items from the living room into my room and locked it before I left for added security. Fast forward time.
We arrived at the train station, but the Taxi driver dropped us off at the ticketing booth, even though we showed him our tickets. We asked just to make sure that is what happened and found out we needed to take a small stroll to the actually train station. Once arrived, the first thing I noticed was the sea of people in this rather old and unimpressive building. Secondly, I noticed how hot...not sweltering it was in there, and finally I noticed the stench of people. We walked around a bit and finally took some seats in a somewhat cool area. We waited and finally the train came. We walked and boarded the train and this began our journey to Beijing!
The trip was nice. I had never been on a train, yet it was always something I wanted to do. I this wasn't of the speed/bullet train variety. just your regular style train. It was nice inside, it appeared that the cart we were in was brand new. We had bought sleeper tickets so we had beds. Each compartment was small with 6 beds - 3 bunks on each side. I happened to get a middle bunk, Stoerm got a bottom bunk under me, and no one was above me. We had 3 other people in the other 3 bunks beside us. We played some cars, listened to our MP3 players, I even watched an episode of Survivor (The Amazon) before deciding to call it a night. I got into the bunk rather easily - but once up there I had a small feeling of claustrophobia. They had stacked the pillow on top of the blanket, so it was difficult to get the blanket over me in such limited space. After everything was ready I felt comfortable. I slept with my small bag close to my body and under my blanket, as it contained my passport and money. The train ride was fun, I liked it. It wasn't that smooth, but it almost lulled me to sleep with the rhythmic patterns and noises. I slept comfortably until this older Chinese women started messing with her plastic bag she had brought with her. The crumpling of the bag woke me up, and Chinese people don't tend to keep their voices down (at least in my experiences) when speaking with each other. Needless to say after 10 hours we had arrived in Beijing. I had also managed to avoid using the eastern style toilet (squat and pop) which I've been told is a real challenge to do on a train.
Beijing alas our destination had been met. We got on a bus and I began to take in what is the Capital of China. A city the the leaders of the country, powerful men, looked over. I started to compare it to WuHan and noticed that in general it was cleaner, bigger, and more modernized. I noticed many westerners almost on every street we were on. There was a blue sky, somewhat, more so than in WuHan though. It seems as though almost everyone speaks English here. The weather was also much cooler than WuHan.
We got off the bus near the famous Tian'amen (spelling?) Square and Forbidden City across the street. We peered at it for a bit and decided that we would come back later so I snapped a couple pictures from across the street as a first impression. We decided to eat some lunch then go find a hotel to drop our stuff off. We ate at this Wonton place which had really good wonton soup. We got some pancakes, but they turned out to be this pastry with sesame seeds on top. We had some hard-boiled eggs that were boiled in tea and soaked in soy sauce - they were quite delicious. Finally, we had some dumpling type things. It was a nice breakfast/lunch so we set out to find our Hotel. At this point, my feet really began to hurt. Stoerm had brought some new shoes from America that I bought and I thought I had worn them in, but it appears that wasn't the case. I began to get a blister on the back of my foot and the side of my toe. So after getting the room we stopped by a pharmacy and bought these band aid type things. We walked some more before I reminded Stoerm that I needed to apply them, so we went to a cell phone shop because our phones weren't working in this city. I'll explain more about that later. Stoerm talked with them and I went out side to apply the fake skin as I like to call them. They made all the difference in the world and I was no longer limp around, but walking like normal. The cell phone shop turned into a major ordeal as we tried to get rates, mixed English and Chinese conversations, losing a sim card, finding it, testing the phone, it wasn't working right, all that good stuff. Took way longer then we expected.
Since it was raining we decided to put the things off until nicer weather, so we went inside a mall. Let me tell you, it's easy to forget you're in China inside this mall. Very western style, western brands, expensive, that mall smell. All of that. Some women stopped us and asked if they could come with us because they wanted to practice their English. I was a little set back, because I didn't get a good vibe from these particular people, but we decided to let them hang out. They took us through the mall, outside, then down this culture street where people sell things on the streets, similar to Mexico for all you valley folk. Then they said we could go into this place to get something to drink. Turns out it was a tea house, so we entered and they put us in a private room and brought us some menus. We looked and thought about ordering nothing - instead we got the cheapest tea and they ordered something else. We talked about different things, and then they brought the bill. Stoerm and I had a feeling that this is what was happening. Basically they're a scam getting people to go to this tea house and pay a lot of money. They charged us for the room, our tea, and then the tea (which was expensive) that the two girls ordered. We refused to pay for their tea, and not all of the room since we were never told it was going to cost anything, not were we there for a long time. They seemed anxious to leave, I think they knew we were onto them. In the end, we only paid about 50 more kuai than normal so it wasn't that bad. I'm sure Patrick has experienced something similar on his travels to various countries. You've just got to be careful and watch yourself.
After that ordeal we walked down some back streets and had some food from these small stalls. It was like a biscuit with sliced potato inside. It was quite good! We decided to come back home and take a nap. I was feeling quite frustrated from the experience and it kind of put me in a bad mood. At home I took a nap and by the time we awoke, it was already too late to visit some of the places we wanted to go. We decided to walk around some other parts of town. We went to this park where we met another one of those people. Pretended to be all friendly with us, walked us through the park, but when we got to the Museum where he worked, pressured us to buy a ticket and go inside. We declined and continued our stroll. We saw various people throughout the day doing similar things. Just to shorten things up, we ended up eating at a food street where I had some fried ice-cream, fried cream-puffs. Some gyro type of thing. They had many different types of food, from star fish, to squid, to sea horses, to scorpions, to other fruits, noodles and all kinds of things. We ate a restaurant and then called it a night.
That's it for now.
