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Dongyang, China
Well, I have a lot of catching up to do, these have probably been the most action packed four days of my life. Let's start from the Begining...
---The First Day: 17/02/08---
My day started with my flight out of Hobart. It was all very comertable and I was in melbourne in no time. There I meet up with the other Melbourne gappers, where we waited around for four hours untill our flight at 5. We flew singapore airlines to Singapore. It was a very nice flight, the time flew by, mainly due to the entertianment system that was provided. It had awesome comedy shows like Flight of the Concords, Family Guy, Scrubs, The Office and Corner Gas. It also had ye olde nintendo games like mario and KIRBY!!!
Anyway, before I knew it we had arrived in Singapore airport. We meet the rest of the Australian gappers there. After another 4 hour wait in Singapore we all got on the flight to Beijing. By this time the time difference was already starting to mess with me. Now, this flight was not much fun at all. It started off fine, but i had watched all the comedy that I wanted to watch and was really tired. But i couldn't get to sleep. So I was very gald when the whole ordeal was over. Singapore Airlines are realy good though, they are just constantly feeding you or getting you dirnks.
---The Second Day: 18/02/08---
So, during the flight the time had ticked over into the next day. So, we arrived in Beijing at around 7 local time. We were met by Tom from a tour oganisation, he was really nice. We all piled onto the bus and got taken to our hotel. We had a really tasty Buffet breakfast while we waited for our rooms to be prepared. I shared a room with Tym who is my Gap partner. The rooms were really compfy, I had a King sized bed to myself :) We chiled out in the rooms for a while but then decided to head out and see some of Beijing. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is that it is f***ing cold. The day we arrived it was -7 degrees C. The rivers and lakes on the way to the hotel were frozen. I's been getting warmer but i'm still shaking.
So, we left the hotel and went to a 5 leveled market just down the street. I bought this really tastey spinach filled bread thing for 1 yuan (about 15 cents, I love this country). After looking around the market we decided to head to the undeground city. To do this we needed to catch the train. God damn the train was packed and there was a huge race for the seats when someone got up. When I got up form my seat to get off I offered it up to these young women next to me, they were just about to sit down when two guys from the other side of the carrige dived across and grabed them. Anyway, on the way to the underground city we saw a train stop that had a Llama temple, so we stopped off at that station and visited the temple. It was really cool. It was really long, each time you went on to the next section the buddas got bigger, untill the last one which was about 20m or taller, all carved out of one tree. So that was good fun.
Anyway, we headed back to the hotel and then went out to dinner, our first chinese meal. I tried one section of the 100 year old eggs, thinking about it just makes me sick. After dinner we headed out and down the street looking for some alchohol, in the end I didn't get any, but we did find fireworks. And I'm not talking about your little things like you get at the store in hobart, these are serious fireworks. So Tom and Josh bought a couple and set them off, they were awesome. So that was the end of the second day. Also, I hadn't slept for a good 40 hours by the time I had got to bed, so I slept very well that night.
---The Third Day: 19/02/08---
So, today had an early start, getting up at 6:30. We headed over to the British Embassy to have a talk on culture difference which was good. It was also about what the Embassys could do for us and what they couldn't. Two guys came across from the Australian embassy so that was good. So, after that we headed over to Tianamen Square and had a group photo. Then we crossed the road and headed into the forbiden city. It was all very nice, I took a ton of photos. That night we headed over to an acrobatic show. That was definitly one of the highlights. There was stuff like a man being launched via see-saw by two other men up into the air and onto the sholders of four men each standing on each shoulders. Another thing was a girl holding herself up by deep throuting a pole thing while bending over herself and holding plates on each limb. So it was pretty friggen awesome. That night we went searching for fireworks again but the store was closed. So we ended up going to the supermarket and loading up on iced tea. Back to the hotel and straight to bed..... I think.... It's all one big blur....
---Day Four: 20/02/08---
Well, today after breakfast we headed over to the Hutong were we went for rides in Rickshaws, it was awesome, zooming all around these streets. We then visited the house of an old chinese man and had a look around at what typical chinese life is like. We then got back into the rickshaws for a ride along the frozen river. After this we headed over to the Summer Palace. It was all very nice but the thing i liked the most was the huge frozen lake in the middle, it looked awesome. I wish we had more time there, I would have liked to walk around the whole of the lake. Anyway, we left there and headed over to the Great Wall of China. That was awesome. It was my second time there but it is still magical. Walking up there was so tiring but when you got tothe top it felt so good. Mao says you are not a hero unless you climb the great wall.
Anyway, on the way back from the great wall we got to see the olympic stadium, it's so impressive, then after dinner when it was dark we drove past agian and the swimming stadium was all lit up, it was really cool.
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