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After a flight to Singapore where I spent an hour (and what a shock that airport was after leaving Delhi) I boarded my plane to Beijing and arrived in early afternoon. I asked the tourist info desk to write down the hostel I planned to stay at in Pinyin so the taxi driver could read it and grabbed a cab from outside terminal. I said a few words of mandarin to him as entered taxi and showed him paper with address on it. He obviously thought I could then speak fluent chinese and began chatting the whole way with me replying 'I dont understand' in mandarin. What I later found out though is the same word in chinese means both 'I Understand' and I Dont Understand',it all depnds on the pronounciation of it...... WHAT??? This is not going to be easy I thought to myself!! I was totally surprised at how modern and clean everything in Beijing seemed. I know coming from India this would be expected but even without this it was totally differant to what I had expected but I would suggest this is more recent changes as a result of the olympics (which by the way Beijing are dead proud of having and it is nothing but advert after advert about it on tv and posters.
Once arrived at hostel settled myself into a nice 6 bed dorm and went to bar.... Oh yes no longer in India and all these places have bars..... Ring ding ding, round one, lets ave it........ Met a few people here and had a real good laugh and was nice to be in an environment finally where I had more opportunities to chat and meet people.
Next day went for a walk out to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City with a few of people I had met in the hostel the night before. Nice to see the palace etc in Forbidden City as was differant from ones previously seen and the whole Forbidden City was pretty spectacular in terms of its sheer size.
The following day decided to go and find a local bus to take us to the Great Wall which sounds easier then it actually proved. After a couple hours of looking for numerous buses and asking people most of whom would run in the opposite direction when you approached them others did not understand us and the ones who understood our poor mandarinn pronounciations all told us differant buses anyway!!! After this decided just to book onto an organsied tour and go with them. Went to Ming Tombs first, whcih I was not overly impressed with but we were a bit rushed around them so maybe I did not witness the full extent of what people rave about these. After this did a usual stop you get from tours at a shop and had some lunch. Had to sit at table with all locals on tour and a load of food was brought out for everybody to help themselves to. I suddenly didn't appear very hungry when chopsticks were presented (I struggle with knife and fork most days, so chopstcks...no chance). I managed to get a few mouthfulls of food before everybody else had devourded the content of the bowls on the table. After this we headed to Great Wall and it did not disappoint. Totally incredible sight once climbed up towards a higher section to see the wall sprialling off into the distance. Was very very hard work to climb mind you and I have no idea how any soldiers would manage to march this wall in full battle gear and weapons??NUTTERS. After dropped off back in Beijing myself and Olaf (German bloke from hostel) went to the night market and saw the sight of live scorpions, locusts, seahorses and starfish etc on sticks ready to meet the fate of the frying pan. Could not wait to tuck into these delicacies, sorry did I say delicacies I meant to say dirty insects and creatures of the sea!!! Anyway all of the above were very crunchy and very tasty (maybe more to do with spicy sauce they were coated in then the flavour of the bugs and sealife themselves..... It was when I got a bit to adventurous and ordered a round bug looking creature that when bitten into oozed out with liquid and then had a tough chewy skin still to finish off, that I realised enough was enough. Mind you after two or three days of being in China and eating these bugs I was pooing regular again and decided to have a few celebratory drinks to toast the return of a nice firm turd in the pan!!
Went to go to History Museum the next day with a guy from hostel called Rob from Manchester. This place has pickled babies and heads etc in jars all around the centre piece of a man totally skinned except his lips and fingernails left on.... Sounds awesome I know so imagine my dissapointment when get there and it is shut. Decdied to visit the Military Museum instead whcih was pretty impressive and was massive, but it was a bit of a brainwashing routine into the communist state which is China. It had tv screens etc sending some kind of subliminal messages to people and was just totally bigging up China and their greatness, which is fair enough wouldnt be a very good museum if it was showing how rubbish China was (even so though it was a bit strange). Met 3 girls in bar that evening who had also come from India and were all from Brighton......... Small world hey!
Went to watch a show whilst in Beijing called 'Chun Yi Legend of Kung Fu'. I would recommend anybody go see this as was a totally immense display of kung fu and acrobatics together with a good story line. It had kids of about 8 years of age doing somersaults from their feet onto their heads, how fantastic does that sound!!!
Found out Beijing were playing football on Sunday (I say found out, but I was actually doing loads of research to try and fit a game in, not as easy as sounds given all Chinese websites were written in Pinyin so decided to hang about to go to this. Got staff to write down address of stadium in Pinyin so could ask on way there. An Aussie turned up in hostel night before game who was in China to watch Austrailia vs China World cup qualifier and he was a footy fanatic (he even knew AFC Wimbledon and all about the break away!!!!). He wanted to go as well so headed out to this the following evening. Totally mad trying to get a ticket at ticket counter as no queueing here and everyone just piles in, very interesting. Once in ground crowd were the usual screams and cheers you hear on tv watching Chinese football so very entertaining. Beijing Guo An won 2-0 so very good result. Big celebrations outside ground afterwards.
Thats it for Beijing so now time to begin my chinese train travel experience and get my train journey to Xi'An.
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