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Finally, an English update for this blog!! (Finnish-speaking dudes, please look at the earlier blog on this day [31.12.2010] to check up the full details about this day)
But well. Here we are. Finally. At Beijing, China. Six hours ahead of Finnish time - which makes us two men from the Future!
How's it been so far? Well...! Starting from the journey: Our trip started from Lahti, Finland, which is Jari's homeplace at the moment. And why Lahti? Simply put, the destination to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport is waaaay much closer to Lahti than Kontiolahti. And of course, it was great to spend a day finalizing our packaging and gathering some necessities that lacked from my packaging (such as, Aspirine!) from Lahti's shops.
Aaaaand then. After a well-slept night, it was time to put on the rucksack and head to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Ahhh, don't we all love those endless security checks and queuing in the waiting line to get ones passport checked up? Lovely, isn't it! And knowing that ahead of us is almost eight-hour trip to somewhere unknown - exciting!! Okay it might NOT sound that great to have a red-eye flight to Beijing, but well, it is a LONG way to Far Away, indeed!
Luckily, the plane was quite comfortable! Finnair flight (obviously!) offered some good-quality coffee, beer (!!) and even some meal-ish like meal during the flight. Oh, and even the breakfeast was served! How sweet! .....aaand finally, I was able to watch the movie "Expendables" during the flight, yay!
But how was the sleeping during the flight? Well.... There was no sleep.
Aaaand that's why, the very next day in Beijing felt quite..... Interesting. At first, no problems at all! Crawling out from our airplane, finding our luggage and changing our €uros into Chinese "RMB"'s - ha, no problem! But oh... About getting a taxi from the airport to our hotel? Ehm... It's good to remember that there are two kinds of Taxis all around the world: "Black" and "White" ones. And Beijing doesn't make a difference. BUT! A Black taxi costs more; we thought about getting into one and driving around in a solid 180 RMB price (which is about ~18 euros), but instead, thanks to Jiaozi-Juhis' advice (our "diplomat" currently in Shanghai) we took a "White" taxi. (Nothing racist in here, hey!!) Although it took probably SEVERAL minutes longer than the black taxi (the driver had NO clue at all, where we supposed to go, not even though we had our hotel's address written in chinese...), but we eventually got to our hotel (after the driver called through his friend and asked a couple of random guys on the street for directions) in a reasonable 110 RMB's price. Splendid!
Getting around the first day in Beijing was quite.... Ehm, tired. We tried to shake away the Jet Lag just by staying awake until the nighttime in China - which meaned over 30 hours of staying up. Phuh. So, basically the very first day went just by getting know to Beijing and its culture. And especially acquiring some FOOOOOOD (and a couple of beers) for the tired travellers. It occured pretty soon during the first day that Beijing is a rather large city, with a more western-styled side (which means "modernized") and more traditional (not-so-modern) side. We clearly preferred the not-so-modern side more, we've been through already waaay too much traffic jams, rush hours, GIGANTIC malls and high price tags. But my GOD, there is STILL so MUCH to see for a simple man, who believed that Kajaani was quite a "normal"-sized city.
Today was a better day, clearly because we got some sleep after a rough first day. Of course, staying awake for long time means sleeping for a long time. Therefore, we missed the hotel's breakfeast. Oh, well! That won't bring two travelling Finns down - ha, no way! That's why we kept ourselves up by eating a couple of CEREAL COOKIES! Ta-da!
Well, that doesn't sound much, so we decided to head to seek some tastier lunch. We found a suitable place through Jari's guidebook, and after we found the place out from map, we decided to head for it.
Did I ever mention, that I'm not THAT good with maps? Well, ehm, in case I didn't... Now I did! After walking a while (maybe a kilometre or so) we decided to exactly pinpoint our location and estimate the remaining trip - well, to be exact, it went like this: "Umm... Now, where the hell are we, exactly?" "Wait, let me see it from the map!"
Luckily a random chinese woman came and told us, "You're not at the right place. Get your asses back, dumbasses!" (well, not exactly in those words, but.... Almost!) we headed back from where we started, and actually FOUND the right place. Yay, foooooood!
This restaurant was actually inside a hotel. A huge, overly dressed, hugely expensive hotel, with many EXPENSIVE stores (such as Louis Vuitton, Prada, Hugo Boss....) inside. Sooooo, doing the math, the food's not going to be that cheap. But oh-my-God, the service in that possibly-expensive-restaurant was GREAT! Well, as it should be in a five-star hotel. We had shrimp soup for a starter, then fried vegetables, fried chicken, a plate with fried eggs, a meat-that-tasted-like-ham and some rubbery-tasting thing with fried rice as the main course. And some DELICIOUS Yasmine tea to drink. (Sounds like everything - expect the tea - is fried, right?) Aaaand for the dessert we had...... Ta-dah, chilled cocoanut with red beans. .....that's right. I REALLY have to mention, that the dessert is clearly NOT a very tasty part of Chinese cuisine. Ew! We thought it WOULD be delicious - the rest of the food were! But ohhh, how wrong we were. s***.
Anyway, the price for filling ourselves up with fried things was 644 RMB's (or yuan's), which was expensive for being a Chinese - but being a Finn? My god, the same course would have costed exactly the SAME amount in €uros in Finland - 644 euros, noticing that the restaurant was inside a five-star hotel, and the service within it was exactly five-star class. Now it costed only ~60 euros, which was not bad, as we planned this to be our New Year's Eve -dinner.
The food in Beijing is..... Yes, AWESOME! Although it is natural that people here eat with chopsticks (yes, one can order a fork and a knife, if one wishes - but we don't do so, bwahaha!), there are also some other new things one should get used to. It is NORMAL, that before every dinner, a tea is brought to you. For free. Damn, I bet that the first place we ate in yesterday has NEVER seen two SUCH amazed guests as we did. "Now.... What?! Is this for... Drinking? Or is this something else? Should we use this as a detergent or something? Heeeelp!" Ehm... Okay, maybe it was also because we were so tired. Maybe. Ehm...!
Well, the food in restaurants is great, but.... Tasting a snake form a local stall - I'd say it does NOT taste that great as Chinese food would taste like. Yuk! Well, we still have scorpions, sea horses, ostriches and many other interesting things (like crocodiles) left to be tasted! These people turn EVERYTHING into food, which is kind of... Scary!
But today we also got to see the Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden city - although the city was open for public only until 16.00. Well, the entrance fee was only 2 RMB's (...which cannot be transferred into euros, it would be something like 0,00.... euros), so the price is clearly NOT the hindrance to enter the city for another time.
Anything else? Yes. It's windy in here. And by saying "windy", I mean "WIIIIIINDYYYY"!!! I swear, that I'll NEVER complain about windy weather in Finland - now I can say "It's not as windy as was in Beijing!", my god! Okay, for the locals this might be a normal seasonal wind, but for us..... A HURRICANE!!! And adding the -4 degrees into this.... It really feels that this wind is tearing the skin apart and blowing through your body, leaving nothing but a frozen skeleton standing among a crowded plaza, shivering with freeze.... Ahh!
The local markets (and by that, I don't mean the malls and other western-stylized shops, but those bazaar-like stalls) are EXCELLENT places to find a thing or two to bring home. For example, I found a book, titled "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung", among with other things. But! The salespersons - as usual - are pretty... Persuasive. The price is always worth bargaining for, but... It's the method they introduce their products for you, they literally GRAB your hand and DRAG you to their products. "Lookie here! Vely nice! Vely nice! Fol you, cheap!!" Well.... These guys know truly a different way of marketing. "If they don't buy it - FORCE them to buy it."
Anyway... Today is the New Year's Eve. It still is a bit of surprise, whether or not the local's are about to celebrate it somehow. There was signs about that on the streets of Beijing, such as "Happy New Year" rolling on a signpost, but it is still a mystery, is there going to be anything like fireworks show to be displayed... Well, that's what we're here to find out!!!
It's going to be a totally different new year's eve in a VERY different country this time... Well, sometimes one thinks one COULD have been in Finland, with close friends and relatives, or in Paris, for example, to see the lightshow, or or or... Well. Sometimes one just has to see the difference of life - with some adventure, and I truly appreciate this, especially when one's able to do this with one very good friend!
Anyway - HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you out there - have a good night!!!! See you next year, as some annoying TV-announcer would say: "Stay tuned for the NEXT episode of - The Blog."
(And besides, my "grow a travelling-beard" -process is proceeding well. Myeheheheh!)
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