Ok now that I finally figured out a way to get into my email account, I can send a post and stop keeping you all in suspense.
I arrived into Beijing on Thursday on an overnight train from Xi'an. I took the soft sleeper this time (I couldn't get anything else), and actually found myself preferring the hard sleeper. The soft sleeper has a little more amenities on it: the beds are a little wider, there's only four people to a compartment instead of six, the compartment has a door, and the conductor will bring you an overpriced coffee in the morning. Overall I didn't really think it was worth it for the extra hundred Yuan I had to pay. The beds aren't that much comfier, it's less social, and there aren't even any tables outside the compartment for a person to eat at! I rolled into Beijing West Train Station at 8:17am, and proceeded to wait in the taxi cue for an hour! I don't know what the deal was there, but there sure was a shortage of taxi's. That's about the eventfulness of the day, I arrived at the hostel and veg'd out for the rest of the day.
On Friday I ventured out to see the Forbidden City. The coolest thing about it is the sheer size! I walked around for a good three hours and saw maybe half of it. At this point I've soon so many temples and whatnot that paying for the extra sections of the City didn't really interest me. As if three hours of temples isn't enough for one day! The City has some huge courtyards that offered some amazing sweeping pictures with my wide angle lens, and the clouds looked pretty amazing that day. That night I met up with my friend Yuyao, who I traveled with in Yunan for a week. He brought some of his friends out and we went to a few bars around my hostel, one of them being a vampire themed bar where everything was decorated like a tomb and the women worse fake vampire teeth and drank blood-like cocktails. Asians are such nerds. After the bar we went out to eat at a bbq stall where we sat outside. It was pretty comical, a friend of a friend showed up and we compared belly sizes (you will see a lot of Chinese men standing around with their shirts rolled up, exposing their bellies). He won, my belly is pretty nonexistent these days. Another funny thing was when an old man in his pyjamas strolled up and just stood there watching us. When Yuyao asked him what was up he just said he couldn't sleep and just went out to take a walk. Then just as he left another old man strolled up and assumed the same position! We deduced they were Chinese zombies.
Saturday was a bargaining day. I endured the gauntlet of the Silk Market to do some shopping before I ship some packages home and to Australia. You have to bargain like a champ here, the Chinese shop owners would knock their mother over to get a chance to rip off a foreigner. For instance, I was bargaining for a pair of knock-off Nike shoes, and the woman gave me a first price of one thousand Yuan! That's like a hundred and fifty dollars! I got her down to ninety. You have to be prepared to walk off about six times and have them call you back to finally get a decent price. For dinner I went out with a couple girls from my hostel and had hot pot, my first experience with it. It was pretty good but there are other dishes I enjoy more. Then I met up with Yuyao at his place and went out for bbq again, and drank beer, again.
And yesterday was one of the best days I've had in China. I joined up with a couple American girls and headed out to the Great Wall for the day. It was a good move that saved me a lot of money compared to doing the tour, and that I had some fun people to take some great pictures with on the wall. We went to Mutianyu, which is nearly three hours away from Beijing and significantly less crowded than the closer locations. The wall here was restored from the original, BUT we managed to find a way around that. At one of the towers a junction in the wall split off another section up a mountain, and it was completely unrestored and overgrown, and beckoning us to walk on it. So of course I'm going to do it. We might not have been allowed to, but whatever. It turned out to be seriously kick-assage. We got to see the wall as mother nature wants it to be, and there was absolutely no other people with us on that section. It climbed up a steep mountainside up to a guard tower that gave us amazing views of the valleys and mountains beyond. And if that wasn't a good enough way to spend the day, we got to take a sled down the mountain! It's basically a steel bobsled track and you ride a sled down it. Tons of fun.
These are my last two days in Beijing. I'm going to spend them getting ready for my flight to the Philippines, which will include unloading half of my truck of a backpack into boxes to be shipped to Canada and Australia. From here on it's light travel, no more hauling around a fucking suit.
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