Post China, Pt.1
I was originally thinking about posting one massive letter about my whole China trip, but that would prove too wordy, and time consuming for all of you; besides, I'm trying to cut down on how much I'm writing. So I've decided to break up my whole trip into three parts, basically Beijing (pt.1), Datong and Xi'an (pt.2), and Shanghai (pt.3). This will allow me to post different visits in different spots, and allow you to see the whole trip, just not all at once. And I'll try to be as simple as possible.
I flew into Beijing on Saturday morning, and arrived in a city in the midst of a torrential downpour. I didn't have a rain jacket, only a rapidly discovered broken umbrella, which was able to keep me dry, but not my backpack. My directions to the youth hostel I was staying at proved to be one the complete opposite end of town, so it was almost six by the time I arrived at my lodging. I ate dinner, and it rained for the rest of the night; not exactly how I was hoping to start trip. Sunday came around, and I went out exploring. By 10am, it was well over 35 C, and I was completely dehydrated. After the cool rain, the day proved to be incredibly hot, and the sun never let up. And being typically male, I didn't bring sunscreen lotion, so I got a little tan. I spent the morning at the forbidden palace, or what I thought was the forbidden palace. I walked all over the place, sorta got lost, only to discover when I was leaving that I had missed the door to the actual forbidden palace, which effectively made me really frustrated. I gave up and decided to leave it for Monday's full day; I had had enough of the squirrelish entry way to the palace, and thought I'd try something else.
I decided to try my luck at the train station, and buy my ticket for Monday afternoon. Now, normally, the train station is incredibly over-crowded, with a complete frenzy of people always buying tickets, with nobody knowing English. In Beijing, I was lucky enough to find the foreigners ticket office, buy my ticket from an English speaker, and found out I was leaving Monday at what I thought was 3:45.....
I headed off to the Temple of Heaven, which is basically a massive park located in Beijing, with one massive temple in the middle, built for one of the dynasties to pray to the heavens for a good harvest. The unfortunate thing was that nobody really told me at the ticket gate that the whole temple of good harvest, the biggest and most amazing temple in Beijing, was closed for repairs until the first week of august....So I paid for price for all entry, to find out that I paid triple than was necessary....
(on a side note about China. As was the case almost everywhere but at the youth hostels where I stayed, I quickly learned in Beijing that either 1) the people cannot count their money, because I'm always being shortchanged on my money due back to me.... Or 2) they were sincerely trying to rip me off, and charge me extra so they could pocket the difference.... I quickly learned that it was the latter 90% of the time...)
my afternoon was spent trying to cool down in my air-conditioned dorm room at the youth hostel. I went out again at night to a night market, tried to get into a Peking Duck restaurant (to find a waiting line of over 2 hours...) I bought some Chinese dumplings (got ripped off.... And fell for it....) and walked around, and took some night pictures of Beijing....
On Monday, I spent my morning getting lost in the Summer Palace, an absolutely beautiful park with a massive man-made pond that took 500,000 Chinese working over 20 years to dig.
I spent the early afternoon taking the bus back, to make my train for, again, what I thought was 3:35. So I eat a late lunch, and decide to walk to the train station....Only to find out, at approximately 2:49, that my train actually was leaving at 3:02, and I wasn't even inside the train station. The only explanation was that God prompted me to double check my ticket, because I was having a great stroll (you'll see the hand of God coming up more in my trip....Not only did He make my trip amazing, but He truly was with me every step of the way...There's no doubt)
I made my train with four minutes to spare, kicked an old lady (via the train conductor) out of my seat, and sat down for what proved to be an amazing eye-opening train ride from Beijing to Datong......
p.s. check my pic's site for update pictures from Beijing.....
Pt.2 coming soon........
I flew into Beijing on Saturday morning, and arrived in a city in the midst of a torrential downpour. I didn't have a rain jacket, only a rapidly discovered broken umbrella, which was able to keep me dry, but not my backpack. My directions to the youth hostel I was staying at proved to be one the complete opposite end of town, so it was almost six by the time I arrived at my lodging. I ate dinner, and it rained for the rest of the night; not exactly how I was hoping to start trip. Sunday came around, and I went out exploring. By 10am, it was well over 35 C, and I was completely dehydrated. After the cool rain, the day proved to be incredibly hot, and the sun never let up. And being typically male, I didn't bring sunscreen lotion, so I got a little tan. I spent the morning at the forbidden palace, or what I thought was the forbidden palace. I walked all over the place, sorta got lost, only to discover when I was leaving that I had missed the door to the actual forbidden palace, which effectively made me really frustrated. I gave up and decided to leave it for Monday's full day; I had had enough of the squirrelish entry way to the palace, and thought I'd try something else.
I decided to try my luck at the train station, and buy my ticket for Monday afternoon. Now, normally, the train station is incredibly over-crowded, with a complete frenzy of people always buying tickets, with nobody knowing English. In Beijing, I was lucky enough to find the foreigners ticket office, buy my ticket from an English speaker, and found out I was leaving Monday at what I thought was 3:45.....
I headed off to the Temple of Heaven, which is basically a massive park located in Beijing, with one massive temple in the middle, built for one of the dynasties to pray to the heavens for a good harvest. The unfortunate thing was that nobody really told me at the ticket gate that the whole temple of good harvest, the biggest and most amazing temple in Beijing, was closed for repairs until the first week of august....So I paid for price for all entry, to find out that I paid triple than was necessary....
(on a side note about China. As was the case almost everywhere but at the youth hostels where I stayed, I quickly learned in Beijing that either 1) the people cannot count their money, because I'm always being shortchanged on my money due back to me.... Or 2) they were sincerely trying to rip me off, and charge me extra so they could pocket the difference.... I quickly learned that it was the latter 90% of the time...)
my afternoon was spent trying to cool down in my air-conditioned dorm room at the youth hostel. I went out again at night to a night market, tried to get into a Peking Duck restaurant (to find a waiting line of over 2 hours...) I bought some Chinese dumplings (got ripped off.... And fell for it....) and walked around, and took some night pictures of Beijing....
On Monday, I spent my morning getting lost in the Summer Palace, an absolutely beautiful park with a massive man-made pond that took 500,000 Chinese working over 20 years to dig.
I spent the early afternoon taking the bus back, to make my train for, again, what I thought was 3:35. So I eat a late lunch, and decide to walk to the train station....Only to find out, at approximately 2:49, that my train actually was leaving at 3:02, and I wasn't even inside the train station. The only explanation was that God prompted me to double check my ticket, because I was having a great stroll (you'll see the hand of God coming up more in my trip....Not only did He make my trip amazing, but He truly was with me every step of the way...There's no doubt)
I made my train with four minutes to spare, kicked an old lady (via the train conductor) out of my seat, and sat down for what proved to be an amazing eye-opening train ride from Beijing to Datong......
p.s. check my pic's site for update pictures from Beijing.....
Pt.2 coming soon........