Sitting On The City Walls Courtyard House Beijing

The labyrinth of Xi'an's Muslim quarter beats such a heated pulse, the walls may well be on fire. So fiercely do the bodies move this way and around, thrusting for aromatic spices and hurling them into blazing woks, all kinds of stringed instruments plucked in stabbing motions. It is 2am and I've just returned from the best bowl of noodles and insects I've ever eaten to moonlight in the court yard. Am I almost a fortnight into this saga? I stand on the city wall, and looking out over the wes...

Right after checking in at LAX for our 12 hour flight to Beijing, we ran into Hahn Rohan -- a old colleague from PayMyBills. Her mother was on the same flight as us, going to visit Hahn's sister. She asked us to "take care of her" because she did not speak English (much). (Eh, we don't speak Vietnamese or Mandrin.) It turned out that there are signs in English everwhere, as the city is ramping up for the Olympics. We eneded up helping Hahn's mom out with her customs card, and Trae ran around ...

Monday we met in the main room at 6:15 to start our trek to the Great Wall. It was a 4 hour bus ride through the crazy traffic of the city, the construction, and later, the rural areas surrounding Beijing. We started at Jingshanling and had 4 hours to get to the other side -- Simatai. The section of wall was supposed to be 10 km, but I don't know that they took into account the 30 minute vertical hike to get from the gate to the start of the wall, nor all of the (incredibly steep) ups and dow...

We went to see Mao's mausolium, which was pretty incredible. I didn't know that Chinese people could actually be that quiet. Even the whining toddler in line behind us was shushed and kept quiet the whole time. We headed up to see the Olympic buildings in late afternoon. The air is disgusting in Beijing. I have been coughing and on the verge of using my inhaler for the past few days. I guess they are planning on shutting down the factories a couple of weeks before the Olympics, or the athlete...

Day 3 was mainly dedicated to the huge Forbidden City, we had an early lunch of yummy street food and walked down there. We got chatting to a guy on our way, but more about him later.... The Forbidden City is huge, we know this because we had to walk along the length of it to get to Tiananmen square and that took at least 20 minutes. Inside it's a series of buildings and courtyards originally built in the early 1400s and variously destroyed and rebuilt since then. When you think of Chinese pa...

Arrive in China - its bloody freezing!!

Found an American gil's passport on the floor. Had a look for he and couldn't find her, so handed it in to some officials. Spotted he eventually and told he whee it was. Not so much as a thank you, she was ****** off that I' handed it in!!!! Bloody yanks!!

Didn't have much luck getting to the hostel. Jumped in a taxi and showed him the address, post code and al. He had no idea where it was. Pullled in and asked the attendant who'd put me i...

Ive never really quite understood why people go to Olympic Stadiums after the Olympics are actually over... isnt that a bit like showing up to a party and everyone has gone home?

Either way I WENT to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Stadium this morning.... I've been to several in my lifetime now, Munich, Barcelona and Calgary, Montreal etc.. For some reason seeing where a big event happened gives you the impression of what it must have been like to be there and to experience even a glimpse o...

Ive got to tell you I am so completely surprised by China. When I was planning to get here I had visions of little short people with tiny feet running around dirt houses wearing kimono's. Okay so really maybe not that bad but truly I expected a much less developed society than what they actually have here.

Their bus system runs perfectly and its clean, the tube or underground is cleaner and much more advanced than the one in London or Denver or many of the other cities Ive been to... ...

So I've been to alot of big cities in my lifetime and especially now that Ive been on the road for 9 months. I will have to say that Beijing ranks in the top 10 best cities in the world and Im extatic about this big city, let me explain.

I've gone on about the fact that this city is quite modern in other blogs but after a few more days of exploring the city I've managed to discover that it has managed to keep its authenticity as well. The other day some friends I met here at my guesth...

So this is just a quick blog to talk about the shopping experience in China.... Lets just put it this way... if you are part of a shopaholics annonymous group you are definately restricted from coming to Beijing... This place is heaven for people who enjoy shopping. The best places to go are the Silk Market and the Pearl Market. At these places you will find everything from electronics selling the latest cameras such as the Lumix and the Cannon Powershot for dirt cheap prices. They sell every...