Feeling a little better today, though i'm not too fussed about doing anything. I think I have decided on what i'm going to do. So I look in to what sort of a price it would be to get a train from Beijing to Xi'an, £26.50 for a 12 hour train for just shy of 700miles, I think that is a good deal. I have decided on the hard sleeper, i'll let you check that out online so you can see the luxury I have opted for. Not one for you mum.
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Purple and I and another Israeli, Tal are going to head to the silk market. This is the place in Beijing for you to get ripped off. I have only heard the stories, I am not sure what to expect, but I am thinking it is going to be some back street market where there will be a lot of shouting and deals going on. I hear they use calculators to negotiate the price, that way the language barrier is negated. So a couple of trips on the subway and we walk around for a bit looking for this back street market. Having had no joy I spot an American and go and ask him if he knows where the silk market is. He tells me that it is a shopping centre at the top of the street by the coffee shops. A shopping centre?! What the?! No wonder we could not find it, wouldn't even have dreamed of looking for a shopping centre. So we head in and it is 5 floors of shopping centre, each floor dedicated to a different type of product. So the bottom couple of floors are full of clothes, so we take a walk around. Really modern shopping centre, with each shop having a glass front with all the products being on nice display, set up in a very commercial way. As we work our way around every shop has a staff member outside who is trying to usher us in to their shop to look at what they have. 'Hello sir, you want suit, come see my suits, very good price' After a while it actually become quite a lot of effort walking through the market, getting assaulted at nearly every shop, some places actually grab you by the hand and try to pull you in. Now apart from this, this is the most polite people I have met in China, all because they want to sell you something. I saw a keyboard for my iPad that I was thinking about, it'll make it a lot easier to type my blog than just on my small phone screen. I looked on line first of all so that I had an idea of what price I should be paying. I can get on on ebay for about £15 delivered, so i'll be looking for something cheaper than that. So the first place I go in to quotes me a price of 500 Yuan, so £50, I say no no no. I enter my price as 80, and he starts telling me how it is bluetooth 3 and what not, I tell him I don't care about that, i'm just interested in a good price. He tells me that there is no way he can do that price, and asks me what my best price is. I tell him, 100 and he says no no, he can not do. So I walk away, he starts shouting up the mall, 'ok, ok 120 best price!' I shout back that all I am going to pay is 100 and finally when I am nearly round the corner he says ok. So I walk back up and get the keyboard, and I am pleased to report that It works as I am using it now to type now. Bargain for only £10. I was very pleased, I didn't pick anything else up while I was in there although it wasn't for the want of trying from the sales staff, every shop, trying to drag in the fresh meat. Some vendors even use a plethora of foreign languages to try and entice you in, waiting until you respond. We get a coffee after shopping, which is an absolute rip of, I decide to get a sprite at 15 instead of a coffee for 36. I know arguing over £1.50, but you know it's the principal of the thing. I do not want to be ripped off, not again!!
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I went to the train station to try and buy myself a train ticket to Xi'an. This was no mean feat, the station is massive, and there are literally no English signs anywhere! There are 51 windows and none of them are English, there is a massive hall filled with people, neon scrolling signs everywhere, timetables, announcements, but nothing in English. Luckily Purple can speak Chinese as she is here to study, we are about to get up to a window when someone tells us that an English window has just opened up. I head over there with Tal to try and get some tickets. Of course there are many Chinese in the English language window, I do not understand. The Chinese appear to be having some difficulty, this does not fill me with confidence. Tal had tried to get a ticket from a local place yesterday but spent an hour and a half there and came away without a ticket. Just being messed around. So today I had decided that the best place to go would be to the main Beijing station, as it was on the way home. Eventually when I get to the window the guy speaks pretty good English and so I have non problem in ordering my ticket, although I am not able to get it for the day that I wanted. So it had to be the next day on the Wednesday. That means another night in my brilliant hostel. Wooo hooo!
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When we get back Purple is feeling pretty tired and so she heads to bed for a bit. Tal and I head out for something to eat, by this stage I'm starving. So we just head to something nearby. We end up ordering hot pot, I don't really know what it is. We order some stock based soup, and then some mushrooms, spinach, beef and noodles. Sounds nice. When it arrives we have no idea what to do. We have to ask, and there is not a lot of English spoken here, and when I say not a lot I mean, none! So what basically happens is that the woman serves us, which I don't really think she does for anyone else. I think we were getting special treatment because if we had not then maybe we would still be there now, because it was a complete joke, I would try and put something in and then someone would come over and tell me that now was not the time, later. So I think it was just for our safety that she came over, so that we did not poison ourselves. The meal, as it turns out was fantastic, although there was far too much of it. We were not even able to finish half the noodles, though these were only added in at the end. It was an experience i'll tell you that. Perhaps not something that I will do again, but still glad that I tried it.
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After this i'm feeling pretty tired and so I head to bed. Purple gets up and heads out with some other guys. Hopefully I will feel a little better tomorrow.