Last Beijing Blog

For the past few days I have been struggling with what I was going to do with my last few days in Beijing. It came down to taking a 17 hour train ride to Xian to see the Terraccotta Warriors and then a 17 hour ride back (that would blow), or change my flights to go ahead and go Bangkok. I decided in the end to change my flights, so I leave for BKK tomorrow night. Just as I did with New Zealand, this final blog gives a quick overview of my thoughts after my 10 days here. A quick side note, I will try to upload pics when I get to BKK. I am a little bit weary of doing it here because the uploader for my camera software is all in Chinese. When I tried to upload my pics in a Korean internet cafe in Auckland it was all in Korean and somehow I managed to delete the pictures from my last 10 days in NZ. Major bummer. So Beijing was a blast. Definitely loved most things about the city. The people are incredibly nice and willing to help you with what little English they do speak. What I noticed though is that those that knew not a word of English would not even give you the time of day. A lot of cab drivers would pull over and as soon as you spoke to them in English they would close the door and drive off. They just did not want to deal with the hastle. A fair amount of people that you would come into contact with would speak some English and you were able to communicate on a basic level. The thing that really annoyed me though about people was as soon as they saw me, dollar signs lit up in there eyes. It seemed as though every seller, from food to clothes, tried to take advantage of the stupid American pig. For example, I went by a food vendor that was selling breakfast sandwiches one morning and saw that she was selling them for 3 Yuan, about 40 cents American. The next day I went back to get one on the way to the subway and as soon as she saw I was white and did not speak Chinese she said the price was 35 Yuan, almost 5 USD. Same goes for virtually all other vendors. It is disappointing because I ended up missing out on eating and buying a lot more little things because they really tried to screw me on the price. Same goes for people trying to scam westerners. It seemed as though everywhere you go its the same old story about how they are poor art students who want you to come to their show. Even so, its a good preparation because I have heard Thailand is even worse. So I will not be so shellshocked next time around. Besides those bad aspects, the people were extremely nice and fun. Aside from the constant stares from people about my height and the bombardment of pictures taken of me without my knowledge that I could see out of the corner of my eye, the people were amazing. In terms of the food, it was good to eat some of the strange things like scorpions and snake that I did, even though from what I saw the Chinese did not even eat these things. The Chinese it seemed were all about eating various meats fried on skewers. Street food is very big here, and quite cheap if the seller is not trying to screw you. Going to restaraunts was very fun though because if you went with a group then you could order around 5 or 6 dishes and end up only paying around 4 USD per person for a feast. Most of the food was similar to what you would find in Chinese restaraunts in the States. I got a little tired of eating Chinese food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday, but it was almost always tasty. Peking Duck was definitely the most delicious thing I ate, and rightfully so since that is what Beijing is known for. It also takes a little while to get used to using chopsticks at every meal. Some dishes are extremely hard to eat with just the sticks so our table often looked like a warzone compared to our Chinese neighbors. In terms of the sites and landmarks of Beijing, just walking around the streets made for some of my favorite memories. The area in Old Beijing was very cool with many shops and bars surrounding a large lake in the middle of the city. Exploring the hutongs, or traditional neighborhoods, was also very fun. The only problem I had was that it was quite cold and snowed the first couple days I was here, which made it very difficult to be outside for long periods of time. In terms of traditional sights, the Great Wall was truly the most breathtaking thing I saw. Just the size and length, coupled with the surrounding mountains and valleys was truly spectacular. Something I will not forget for a very long time. Overall, Beijing was very cool and definitely worth the 14 hour plane ride it took to get here. I think 10 days is a perfect amount of time to spend here. I saw everything I wanted to see, and then some. As a final remark, I can tell that China is on the verge of breaking out as a world superpower. The people have the capitalistic instincts and drive to definitely start making moves economically, and just the sheer amount of people (there are around 1.34 billion people in China) will make them a force to reckon with in the next coming decades. I would not be suprised if China is the next big thing in terms of travel destinations for westerners. Now it is time to move on to Southeast Asia. I am getting to BKK on the 5th of March and almost immediately meeting up with a friend from college and myself and some of her friends are going to take the overnight train to Laos. I can't wait. See you in Thailand.