Courtyard Beijing Northeast

... game.com
Our forum: http://www.cdkey-game.com/forum/ (more than 8000 members now)
My Email: kobe@cdkey-game.com
My MSN: kobe@cdkey-game.com
================
Alina

... in there. It was bloody slippery, and I only had my shoes with no grips on. I was flopping about all over the place! Got some odd looks, although I couldn't tell if it waws because I kept slipping or whether it was just the westerner thing again. I would have stayed there loner and looked at more stuff, but I got fed up of the useless signs that didn't tell you anthing beyond pointless structural nonesense. The imperial telephone room was funny though.


Beijing, China dubasfisher

... stop too early. That might not sound lik a big deal, but in a city of 19 million like Beijing, one metro stop is the equivalent of at least a couple of miles. I left the metro and decided to take the situation as it is and hope for the best. I walked for an hour solid till I gave up. I eventually turned back and walked a half hour back towards the subway stop before I saw this lovely restored street that I couldn't resist ...

... clothing with some T-shirts for the warmer climates ahead I chose some designs I liked and the haggling began in earnest. Starting at 600 Yuan per T-shirt with considerable accusations of insanity and daylight robbery Tom and Anna were able to negotiate down to 70 Yuan for two, about £3.50 each. Playing hardball is required here and by walking away and playing the vendors off against each other you can get some really cheap, reasonable quality stuff if you know what you are ...

... men's beach volleyball - this was unlike any other Olympic event, it had the air of a pool party, with Brazillians cheerleaders in cowboy hats, rock music, misting machines, pijou (beer) and a dude in an American flag Evil Kanevil suit In general, Chinese people do not clap at events to show their appreciation, they shake and wave things. We first learned this on our 12 hour ride on the sleeper bus making our way through Southern China ...

... and ordered a yummy Aubergine and dumpling dish whilst reading my now 3-days-old Hamburg Newspaper. But I was soon approached by one of the waiters who asked me to be his "good friend". He spoke a tiny bit of English but we managed to have a bilingual chat and were soon surrounded by what looked like the entire kitchen and waiting staff. Having made some new friends, I went back for a good night's sleep at Jari's. Caro x

... began the descent, which in a way was harder than going up as the strain was all on the knees! We were given a very tasty lunch as a reward for not becoming one of the Wall's injury statistics for 2008 and we all piled into the van for the long trip back. The Summer Palace was the next stop. Our initial attempt to travel to the palace in a genteel dragon boat was foiled as the boat wasn't going that day for whatever reason, so we got a cab. The Kunming ...

... which dimension we had just stepped into, I half expected my food to start walking around or a camera crew to jump out and say "hey welcome to another episode of freak out the lao wai! (foreigner)," with a good looking chat show host and free gifts for us but it was not to be. These guy were serious about doing what they were doing. Forty minutes of wondering later Carl and I were finally enjoying our pancakes, hash browns and ...

... size paint brushes filled with water. They use these to do (temporary) calligraphy on the sidewalks-- pretty neat! We then took a boat ride from one end of the lake back to the other, where we exited. All in all, quite a beautiful area! In the afternoon, we went back into downtown Beijing. First, we had a great lunch at a nice Chinese ...

... not chaiman Mao! We had another close call with the police. We were buying train tickets, never a happy place and a man reversed his car into us (in a pedestrian area). We gave his boot a whack with our fists as a signal to stop and walked off. The guy then chased after us and told us we had to come and talk to the police. We went back 2 his car and one look at the policeman told us he couldn't care less. He was sat in his little electric car drinking a coke ...