Adventures in Beijing

Summer Palace
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Well the last time we wrote we had just visited the Great Wall of China, on that note, I am going to add some more pictures to that entry today and hopefully they work.

We were supposed to spend another 2 days in Beijing, which turned into 3. Thursday (Febuary 8, 2007) we started the day off with a McDonalds hot chocolate at the Summer Palace. This place was absolutely huge, and we enjoyed walking around the Palace and the surrounding park. You could easily spend an entire day walking around the Summer Palace, but when you only have 5 days in Beijing, it does not allow for much time to be spent there. From the Summer Palace you get a gorgeous view of the City of Beijing. We jumped into a taxi, and until this point I thought I was doing quite well, considering I didn't have to call Paul or Mathias all day to get them to tell the taxi where to take me (this turned out to be completely false, but at the time I thought I was doing great). We made it Tianamen Square with no problems to meet the guys, because we were going to go and see Mao. Unfortunately the guys were a little late and didn't get to go inside, but as we did with Ho Chi Minh, we went through the security process (not as tight as it was in Vietnam) and walked into see Mao. (He is a much better looking man that Uncle Ho as they so affectionately call him in Vietnam.) We then headed outside, passing through the gift shop right outside the Mausoleum (weird) and waited for the guys to meet us at Tianamen to go for a walk. We then proceeded to the Pearl Market, which was great. I wish I had unlimited amounts of money to spend there. All of the nock off clothing and purses were great and the pearls were stunning. We left with two purses each (which isn't bad). In the basement of the Pearl Market there is a crazy fish market that we wandered through. We then proceeded to down town Beijing to walk through the streets and see all of the vendors. The day was great. We saw a lot of the city and tonight it was time to see the night life in Beijing. We had dinner at the apartment and then all sat around with the new microphones and Paul on his guitar... we sang a little Justin Timberlake, Meatloaf and the Beatles, and then were getting too loud and decided we should probably head out. We went to a Hip/Hop club called MIX. We hadn't been dancing since New Years Eve in Chiang Mai, so it was awesome. We danced well into the morning, when all of a sudden I couldn't find Koren. We searched and searched and figured she must have gone home with Mathias. So we jumped into a cab and headed home, we got there to find out that Koren wasn't there. Thank goodness for modern technologies and cell phones, we could call a guy we knew at the bar and tell him to look for Koren. He found her... YEA.... I was so nervous, but more just excited that we had found her. We jumped in a cab and went back to pick her up. We got back to the apartment to see the sun rise and then finally decided to hit the sack.

Paul, Koren and Mathias in the fish market
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We got up Friday afternoon and got all ready to leave since we were catching the train tonight to Xi'an. Our train left at 5:33pm, so we figured 1.5hrs was plenty to get to the train station, which it should have been had the cab driver not been the biggest idiot on the planet. He had no clue where we were going. I specifically showed him on my ticket, in chinese, that we needed to go to the West Beijing Train Station... we didn't end up there. After an hour and fortyfive minutes in the cab, I finally convinced him to let me use his cell phone to call Paul and Mathias to explain to the idiot cab driver that we wanted to turn around and go back to the apartment. At 7:00pm we finally made it home... we spent 3 hours in the same taxi driving around the city. The guys could do nothing but laugh, and neither could Koren or I. We were very lucky to get train tickets for the next night to Xi'an, and one more night in Beijing wouldn't be a big deal, and it was Mathias' birthday, so we knew it would be a good night. Paul and Mathias took us to a party with all of their friends and it was awesome. It was a costume party, you had to dress in bad chinese fashion, which was fine, because our back packs are full of bad fashion. Continuing with the swing of things, the night turned into the morning before we finally hit the sack.

Just incase we got sick of Chinese Food
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Saturday Febuary 10th...

We are leaving today, and our goal is not to miss the train. We had a very nice lunch of Peking Duck before leaving for the train station, and this time Paul accompanied us to make sure we got there. We were there 2 hours early, but at least we got to the train station and on the train. We had soft sleepers, and even though we weren't in the same berth, the trip went so quickly. I woke up to load music and I was in Xi'an... YEA... we have been talking about coming here for 4 months and now we are finally here! Jon picked us up very early this morning at the train station and it was great to see him.

Koren and Erin being real tourists in down town Beijing
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All in all, Beijing was an absolute blast. Not only did we get to see all the touristy things, but we got to see how people live. Paul and Mathias were so wonderful to us and made Beijing all that much better. We had an absolute blast with the two of them. I hope you guys read this, because we just wanted to say one more big thank you!!!

Alright, so we are in Xi'an and we made it safely and it only took 2 tries. It was bound to happen sometime on this trip that things wouldn't go as planned, and I am happy it was somewhere where we knew people and we weren't stuck. So all is well and we are loving China!

Chinese version of Street Meat
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Hope all is well at home!