Qianmen Hostel Beijing

Wish I had kept this blog while I was actually here - when the number of things I have to say about Beijing actually surpassed my laziness in saying them. Right now, I'm sitting in my apartment at 8:30 pm on a Saturday night because everyone either went home or went to do karaoke, and tonight, I just wasn't feeling it. And I think that perfectly captures how much I actually miss Beijing these days. What a city. And, at a lot of times, what a city in spite of the Olympics, not because of them....

Today, Max, Jeronimo, and I payed a visit to 798 Art District. Formerly a factory, this complex now houses the homes, studios, workshops, and galleries of China's cutting edge artists. Some was almost indistinguishable from similar western avant-garde art. Some was beautiful. Some was ugly. And a few galleries aimed at revealing something truly beatiful and distinct about the culture, atmosphere, and turbulence in the modern era, and I ate it up. I guess, overall it was like any day spent per...

Maybe I'd become too used to China or something. But upon meeting my roommate I really wasn't too impressed. Just some 40-something, slightly overweight Floridian who had come to some strange place to see the Olympics. Especially after utterly confusing my previous roommates (girls) (and myself) by saying how awesome Gambia is in the same sentence I mentioned it might be difficult for women to travel there on their own. But enough of that, I haven't quite resolved that one myself. Back to Tom...

I count myself lucky to have been in Beijing for 3 of the handful of sunny days Beijing gets all year. And on these glorious sunny, blue sky days, I made the short trip from Qianmen to the Temple of Heaven Park, still within the old Ming City. I wasn't so much interested in the temples and sights, they were just as nice from the outside so I didn't pay the extra 5 bucks to get the complete entry ticket. Instead, I wandered into the less-traveled sections. There I found a wide selection of you...

I got back to Beijing on the 7th, the day before the biggest day in its recent history. Unfortunately, they cleaned up the city too much, no grilling outside, closed nightmarkets, put up walls blocking views of the older, more aged areas of the old Ming city, really took some of the soul out of the city. But still, I love Beijing. The history, culture and character are very vibrant - the people are excellent. I had a woman take her daughter by the hand and baby on her chest sprint 3 blocks to...

We arrived safely yesterday morning. It was a bit worrying as we knew we had to have our temperatures taken before we were allowed in however they're now using cameras as you walk past - rather than scary men in suits boarding the plane.

Took us quite a while to get from the airport to our hostel. Got to the hostel about 6ish and then had a walk up to get some food. We weren't quite sure of what to do at the restaurant but we eventually had a waiter who could speak some english. Andy h...

Amazing place Beijing...so many happy memories! China is such a great place to backpack that we are going again

On the 29th of August we left Ulan Bataar at 8am, which we were really gutted about as we had had such a good time in mongolia. One of the blokes who worked in the hostel was an absolute gem, so Helen bought him a bottle of tiger beer (which he seemed to drink everyday!) which he was very happy with. In exchange he gave us a bag of fruit and a book for Helen to read which sums up the generosity of the mongolian people really. At the hostel, in the same room as us there was an irish girl, who ...

Probably the most memorable day from all the trip... for all the reasons... We got up early in the morning to go to the Great Wall trip organized by the hostel... 10km walk from Jinshanling to Simatai. The driver was supposed to pick our group at 7... we had to wait about 20 minutes for him and when he finally came and we got into his minibus we noticed something was wrong... there was 8 of us and only 7 seats... Hmmm... what do we do? We get in anyway... The road to the Wall was supposed to ...

We arrived in Beijing at 5 am... got out of the airport and straight away we were approached by a tout... Being tired and clueless we agreed to take his cab... He led us to a parking where a friend of his was waiting in the unmarked car... We should have turned away, but we went for it anyway. He took out the price guide and said it will be 270 yen, we tried to argue that we've seen on our hostels web page that it should be around 100 yen, but he just laughed and said that maybe 3 years ago.....