Day 149

I woke at 09.30 when Leor left the hotel but i didn't actually get up until 10.00...After showering i enjoyed spending some time in the courtyard just relaxing with an English paper...a luxury for me now!  I went off for a walk and paid Leo hostel for the Great Wall of China Trek for tomorrow and after being stared at by a fairly scary chinese man headed back to the hotel and managed to get Luke up and into the shower...which for those of you who know  him is no mean feat!!  Once Luke was successfuly prised out of bed i headed back out and to the bank to restock our sorry looking wallets.  After picking up Luke, Llede and Steven and headed up to Leo hostel to work out how to get to Beijing West Train Station and get our tickets to Xian...deciding it would be easier to spend an extra 1.50 we got the hostel to organise them for us.  Cost Â¥281 with 25 of that going straight to the hostel...our tickets we're a little cheaper than normal becuase we had the top bunks in the hard sleeper...a tip they don't tell you in the Lonely Planet for us cheap skates!!

Once our tickets we're organised we headed out to a small restaurant for lunch/breakfast with Steven and Llede.  Deciding sharing was the cheaper and more enjoyable option we ordered egg fried noodles with tomatoe, sweet and sour chicken with pineapple and egg friend rice.  Very nice and i'm pleased to say my chop stick skills are coming along nicely!

We make it out alive un-sexed

Deciding we all wanted to get in some tacky bits of shopping we headed for where we thought was a nice market for some haggling galore.  When we eventually made it, it turned out to be a very expensive department store...kind of like house of fraiser but for people with a bit more money.  After admiring the pen that was worht Â¥9000 we decided haggling was out of the question and us cheap skate tourists didn't really fit in here so started our next mission...to try and find a traditional tea house and some green tea.

After walking for what seemed like hours and not really getting anywhere apart from back to Tienanmen square we walked passed the tea house and it was only becuase Luke went back to double check we made it to Leoshe teahouse.  After admiring the dragon statues outside and i imagine pissing the locals off by touching their "precious items" we headed inside  to a very posh and very expensive but gorgeous tea house.  We paid 40Â¥ for a cup of green tea each but got 2 free snacks each...some we're nice and the others we're disgusting but it was worth a try!  As we sat there expecting to have a small tea cup shoved in front of us and feeling slightly out of place in the very expensive surroundings the waitress appeared with 2 large glasses, the green leaves on a small plate and a teapot full of hot water.  After swilling out the glasses with hot water (in a way that is made to look so easy but you know if you tried you'd end up scolding yourself!) she added the green leaves and a small amount of water and handed it to Luke to "smell"...becase her english wasn't fantastic Luke tried to drink the whole thing there and then...slightly embarassed he managed to recover fairly well with a very deep sniff and nod of approval...the rest of us just took a normal sniff and giggled to ourselves for the rest of the day.  10 minutes later and Luke's managed to finish his glass and have another refill from the tea pot left on the table...and i'm still struggling, i think it's safe to say i'm not a fan of green tea!  30 minutes later and i'm still there trying to drink the tea and damn it...they came over and filled up the glass again!  I gave up in the end and passed it to Luke who managed to finish it and in the meantime a shadow puppet show started.  It had something to do with frogs, turtles and a crane and after 10 minutes of a really unusual but well worth it performance they finished and the waiter came up to us and explained that every day they have a puppet show in the afternoon around 4.00 and traditional music in the evenings from around 6.30pm .  So all in all, a really nice place with some interesting entertainment and i can safely say i won't be having green tea again...!

We started heading back towards the hostel and on the way stopped at a couple of shops.  I looked vaguely interested in a pair of chopsticks, thinking that something i would quite fancy but the ones in the shop weren't really that appealing.  After asking how much they were and being quoted 180Â¥ (our daily budget of 10 pounds is 150Â¥) we left and were as soon as we stepped outside the shop were chased down the street with the price gradually getting lower and lower...the fact that we kept saying no because we didn't want them didn't seem to matter!  We eventually made it to outside the hostel where she quoted 20Â¥ for them...it made no difference to me becuase i didn't want them but if you ever come to China make sure you haggle becuase they always sell foreigners things at a rip off price!

Deciding that we would still like to have a look at some markets we carried on walking (but without looking at any chopsticks) and ended up on a lot of the small side streets.  These were very nice until...we noticed a sex shop...then another one...and another one...hmmm, i think we took a wrong turning but decided to carry on going until we got to a main road again so we didn't get too lost!  Eventually making it out of the sex central back alley we arrived on a main road and then took roughly 10 minutes trying to work out where the hell we were!

After consulting our Lonely Planet Steven fancied visiting the Temple of Heaven and gardens, sounded nice so off we headed.  30 minutes later and we're still walking with no temple in sight!  But we did come across an army surpless store and being the curious folk we were decided to take a look.  Turns out it was very over priced but they were helpful enough to tell us that the temple closes at 6pm...after looking at our watch we realise it's now 6.15 pm...oh crap!  Ah well, the gardens should be nice and it's not that far away now so on we carry, stopping at the playground along the way.  but this was no ordinary playground!  The majority of their play equipment is focused on exercise!  There were running machines, joggers, striders, stepping machines, bench presses, leg resistance machines... they had everything and it was all for free!  Well (as i'm sure you can tell) i thought it was pretty sweet!

After being dragged away from the playground we carried on our way to the gardens.  Eventually arriving at the entrance we realised you had to pay 35Â¥ to get in...realising we only had 50Â¥ on us meant we couldn't go in even if we wanted to!  Deciding it wasn't worth the money anyway because the temple was now closed we starting making our way back to the hostel.  Instead of being a clever, normal tourist and taking the main roads which are easy to follow and generally signposted in English as well as Chinese we took the back roads which was an adventure in itself!  Half an hour later we made it our alive and with a new lighter in tow!  Luke bought an interesting Beijing lighter from a lighter shop...it literally sold nothing but lighters!

Carrying on our walk back to the hostel we came across what looked like a telephone booth but with a computer in.  On further inspection it turns out it's a route planner in English...the only problem was it couldn't find Tienanmen square on it...surely that's not a good sign when it's such a big place?  A little further on and we realise the road we need to take is blocked off for development work for the 2008 Beijing Olympics but notice the side road we took earlier and it's off past the sex shops again.  We make it out alive un-sexed and although absolutely knackered Luke and I head to Tienanmen square to see the flag ceremony.  Every sunrise and sunset the flag is hoisted or lowered in time exactly with the sun.  Arriving at Tienanmen square we notice the huge crowd of people which is good in one way because it means we haven' t missed it howeve, for me and the short ass that i am it means i have no chance of seeing a damn thing!  I ended up having a piggy back from Luke (whilst pushing 10 other tourists out of the way so i could get up) to see.  After a farly impressive ceremony we headed back to the hostel and grab a bite to eat, egg fried rice and spicy chicken.

After dinner we decided we need some more cash for our, again, oh so desperate wallets!  Our usual cash point was closed so we had to head around the corner to another bank and what a mission it was!   We finally made it and got the dosh we needed and with our wallets feeling a little better Luke decided to get some Lychees...2Â¥ should get you a  hell of a lot more than 5!!  Oh the joys of being a tourist, how i love to be ripped off!!!

Watch the simpsons on in the TV room and then put on anchorman 2 but dissapointingly it freezes half way through.  Giving up on it we start talking to the Chinese speaking American and Ronan again.  Being absolutely knackered after all that walking an with a 7.30am pick up tomorrow i decided to head to bed...on arriving at our hotel i realise luke has the keys to the bags and have to go back to leo to get them.  We stayed and chatted for a while and left leo about 12.30.

Trying to set an alarm clock has never been so difficult!  We realised that the new lady in our dorm, Nadine from Belgium, had taken the only plug socket to charge her mobile phone...meaning i couldn't plug in my mobile phone (the battery of which was dead) to use the alarm clock.  The only other plug socket was in the bathroom so we ended up balancing the phone on the sink and plugging it in there.  With that we headed to bed in our comy, air conditioned room!