the long winded china stories
(part three)




two hours later we are in beijing. when we get out of the station
we try to get a taxi to our hotel. but they refused to go there. they
wanted to take us to the hilton. yeah.right. do we look rich?
after not having any luck we ended up walking there. luckily most of
the landmarks listed in the guide for a lonely planet were still there
we find our hotel. darryl and my room was in the basement floor and
our window had a lovely view of barbwire. good luck if there's a fire.

on the way to the hotel we had passed a mall with a pizza hut in it
among other things. my friends were dying for western food. so we
went there. yes, we came all the way to beijing just to hang out at
the mall and eat at pizza hut.

after eating we decide to go to tiananmen square. we start walking
and decide to take a pedicab there. darryl was constantly worried
about getting charged too much. so he had to bargain to death. and
the pedicab drivers wanted to hook us up with a tour of an old neighborhood
near tianmen. but we wanted to get to the square before dark.
the pedicab drivers had other ideas. finally we just got off and
then they charged darryl more than he had bargained for and he was
not pleased.


in the square we just found somewhere to sitdown and watch the asian
tourists and the old women selling bottled water and kites to fly.
at sunset they lowered the flag and put it away and big overhead lights
came on. the square is really nice place just to sit back and relax
and people watch despite its history.

the next day we got up and ate at duncan donuts. yes, they have
duncan donuts in beijing. but not in taipei for some reason.
then we headed off to tiananamen to catch a bus to the wall. the
buses were much more expensive than we wanted to pay. so we ended
up hiring a car to take us there. this is illegal but a much better
way to go considering how the taxi drivers are used to rich dumb tourists.
the driver had never driven foriegners before. the radio played some
music my friends knew so he was impressed when they sang along.

at the wall he parked the car and waited while we went on our adventure.
the wall was much more touristy than i expected. hawkers everywhere.
we opted to be wimps and took the sky car to the top of the wall.
on the wall itself were occasional water sellers and big umbrellas
marked "POLAROID" where you could buy overpriced film and the such.
at different locations on the wall were places where people were
dressed in traditional costumes of soldiers or places you could change
into costumes to have your pictures taken. we opted not to do this
though. somehow i expected more from the wall. i mean it is amazing
since it can be seen from the moon and all. but in the end its just
a wall. the steps are much larger than you might expect. in certain
areas there is more serious "climbing" involved.

after climbing down we went to meet our driver. darryl was being extra
slow and we weren't too happy since we had told the driver we would
be back at 1pm. traditionally you take the driver out for lunch when
hire him for a day. unfortunately we were unable to as we were in
a rush to get back in time to see the forbidden city before it closed.
we felt bad but what can you do?



part one
part two
part four
part five
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