China- Beijing

  Beijing, China
Friday, January 19, 2007

Hey all finally got this thing working. Had awful problems with the internet in Beijing, couldn't even log onto my emails sometimes. Anyway we are in Xi-an at the mo but more about that later.

Anyway arrived in the airport in Beijing 5 days ago unfortunately my bags didn't, anyway filled out my lost baggage form and met my taxi driver to the hotel. The weather is very cold hitting -6 at night but the hotel is well heated so it wasn't a prob

Year of the Pig

I had a few hours to kill before meeting the group so went for a wander around. The people are quiet friendly. They do stare a lot but its usually followed by a smile and a wave. We met our tour leader and the rest of the group about 7 or so. Theres 16 of us all in all 2 couples, my roomate Matt, the other 10 are girls travelling on their own, so I told ya your needn't have worried about it Ma. Anyway we all went for a bite to get aquainted and all that, twas very nice and there all dead on so it makes life a lot easier.

On Saturday I decided to go bargin hunting and got myself outfitted from head to toe for next to nothing in the Silk market. It's a bit annoying at first when you get in there cause you've 5 or 6 floors of shops and every shop you walk by has someone shouting at you to come in and buy something. A few of em would grab onto my arm and hold on tight while leading me into a shop, another one took my bag that I had and walked off with it to another shop so I would follow her. But it wasn't unfriendly in the way they did it and all I had to do was keeping smiling and saying no and they would leave me alone eventually. But you really need to haggle, I got a pair of northface shoe down from 1200 to 400RMB (around 40 euro), there probably still making a huge profit but I was happy with myself.

Entrance to Forbidden City

Sunday then we had a guide take us through Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City. It was really really really cold but very interesting. We saw the place where Chairman Mao is buried. You could go in and have a look if you wanted, but your not allowed to bring any bags or cameras and at 8.30am the cue was already huge with Chinese people lineing up to have a look. After the forbidden city we went to some park that has a huge statue of Budda up on the top of a hill, it looked down onto the forbidden city and the view was amazing.

We grabbed a bite to eat before getting a taxi to the Summer Palace (unless it has a meter you have to haggle a price for this before you hop in as well). It been around for 8 centuries and is two-thirds lake.

Summer Palace: A view of the frozen lake.

The lake itself was completely frozen over and had hundreds of people on it walking across the ice, funny enough the only way to get onto it was to climb over a sign saying "Do Not Walk on Ice". But we figured with all the people on it, it was probably safe enough. It was a good laugh and have some really nice pics of that too.

Anyway as it stands I can't upload any of my pics. I have around 380 so have been quiet snap happy. I got em burned onto a CD to send home to Tipp but the man in the post office said it was illegal to send a CD out for some bloody reason, so will try again in Hong Kong and see what happens.