Not my favourite day in Bejing. We left our hostel and changed to a hotel, as we meet our tour group tonight. Although we have our own bathroom rather than a shared one, it's not the cleanest. We'll cope...it's Beijing!
We booked a tour to the Summer Palace which is an immense park which was once a playground for the imperial court. Royalty came here to edlude the summer heat that roasted the Forbidden City. Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt the park in 1888 with money supposedly intended for the creation of a modern navy. After at least a 40 minute drive to the Summer Palace amongst public holiday tourists taking up every inch of the road, and the scorching heat, I was well and truely ready to frollic in imperial garden glory. Oh how wrong could I be. There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Chinese tourists, with a couple of German and Scandinavians and 4 tall Aussies thrown in for good measure. This was the first day of Beijing where I couldn't cope, and quickly decided I was going to walk and bustle like a local - push your way through the crowd and not apologise for brushing or hitting anyone in your path. No-one even blinks an eye at this rudeness, and once I started I got the hang of it very quickly. Rani and Kt were interested in seeing everything and taking lots of photos, but I felt like murdering someone so Dom and I quickly escaped to an area with a few less tourists. We met the girls about an hour later, found our coach and got the hell out of there. Not happy Jan!
We got dropped home and the other girls went to do more sightseeing, but I was over it so I had some free time before meeting up with the other 10 people we are to share the next 2 or so weeks with on tour. Most seemed nice and well travelled but we will begin the introductions tomorrow morning at 7am when we leave for Mongolia.
In the evening we went for yet another delicious dinner. The food here has been sensational and obviously nothing like the Chinese food available back home. Again we washed it down with chinese beer (I found out the name - Tsing Tao - which I think you can get at home) and were the main attraction of the night, again being the only westerners in the restaurant. The waitresses loved serving us, and laughed at our sign language trying to ask for certain things. The guy next to us who was smoking away certainly didn't have any problem understanding my sign language that was telling him to put the cigarette out because it was repulsive to sit next to in a restaurant. He was very obliging, but really I gave him no choice. And he knew I had back up!
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