Greetings from Beijing!
Nat has been teaching us some basic Chinese here and there. Mostly to fend ourselves off from overzealous vendors. My biggest phrase is, “Boo, shiu shiu” which I probably spelled wrong. It means “No, thank you” however, if I say “shiu shiu” with a slightly different pronounciation I just told people, “No, diarrhea”. I’m still wondering how many vendors are laughing at me trying to speak Chinese or if I told them no about diarrhea.
The last few days have been a lot of fun. We’ve met up with the tour group and everyone seems to be getting along rather nicely. I think it’s mostly Leavitt and I and our charming personalities J It’s a great group with fun personalities. Very dynamic and I’m really enjoying traveling around with them so far.
Yesterday we headed to the Great Wall that extends from horizon to horizon. Leavitt created a stir when she asked someone about a fan or something at one of the stands. She opened up the capitalistic Pandora’s box and we were suddenly swarmed. Thank you Leavitt!
I took a different route to the top i.e. the gondola. There was no way I was going to spend my time hiking up to the top, I was going to be up there taking pictures and walking the wall! It was great though, I headed from tower to tower along the wall. The steps are a bit dodgy because they aren’t very tall, but they are wide and so you can’t take long strides across or go in a set rhythm along the wall. This made walking a little more tedious—having to watch your step and all that. Besides, I really wasn’t in the mood to biff it in front of the vendors. My self esteem couldn’t handle that.
We had a few options of getting from the Great Wall down to our bus. We chose the most fun route via toboggans! Totally serious, we had these little sled things and a really fun chute that we would go down. Unfortunately we had these old French ladies in front of us that were especially brake happy. Other wise, we were always being told to slow down or slamming into the back of one another! Crappy French ladies!
Today we did the Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City thing. Tiananmen Square is huge, I guess you can fit a million people there. It’s mostly a peaceful gathering place for festivals and things. The only thing that popped in my head was, “Where is the place where the tanks came through?” It’s a very large square though and with Mao’s mug hanging in the middle.
The Forbidden Palace was pretty awesome. The movies make it look larger than I had thought it would be. It was still mighty impressive though. They said that the weather was going to be 37 degrees Celsius (I have no idea Fahrenheit), there was a nice cool breeze that helped alleviate the dry heat. Our guide Kevin, told us that he’s been taking tour groups through here for 6 years and this is only the tenth time where he had blue skies—we had been very fortunate!
Most guides that take you through any place we’ve seen in China so far, have these obnoxious megaphones and flags that people follow. When we saw our local guide Kevin, we immediately pounced on him telling him, “No flag!” We couldn’t emphasis that enough. Instead he would walk around with his water bottle which looked a little less stupid.
Tomorrow we get up crazy bright and early to head on the train to Mongolia. We will take the train for just over 24 hours to the capital, Ulaanbataar. We’ll be crossing the Gobi desert and hopefully not getting too much cabin fever. Leavitt is itchin’ to ride a camel. Apparently they have 2 humps, so why not?
I’ll do my best to get a full report of Mongolia soon! Cheers!
E
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