Beijing
Not what I expected!! I guess I thought of it as this huge hub of cars, traffic, buildings, crowds upon crowds of people, but it hasn’t been like that so far. Things are busy I guess, but coming from Seoul it’s a piece of cake walking around. It’s amazing to walk on a sidewalk in a fairly central part of the city, and be able to go at a normal pace, not worrying about dodging the on-coming traffic of people, haha.
Well, we did Tienamen Square yesterday which was interesting to see finally. Such a tragedy what happened in ‘89. Of course here they don’t give tours or information regarding that “incident” as I’m sure it’s not something they want to draw attention to….especially considering that the Olympics are just 12 days away! You can definitely feel the pride of the country here right now…..and the enormous amounts of money they’ve spent on preparing for the Olympics are visible almost everywhere you look. They have people lined up on the popular streets to offer you help from one destination to the next. Everyone is very friendly and we’ve gotten so many “hello’s” and “can we take a picture with you?”. Koreans are very nice as well, but there’s a more laid-back aspect to the Chinese that I hadn’t expected.
We also went to the Beijing Zoo and saw some pandas. The new “Olympic Panda” exhibit was nice….they had about 8 of them in this environment and you could watch them waddling around, eating on their backs….the trainers would walk out their with them and play with them, etc. It was so neat to finally see them in person!
Hmm, I’ve been taking lots of pictures and will be sure to post them soon. We also went to a massage place and got hour-long foot massages for $12, and did an ear cleaning thing where they put a candle in your ear and it sucks out all the dirt and grime. It felt amazing!! So today we had planned on doing the Great Wall, but I’m not sure cause my friends are still asleep right now. May go tomorrow instead and just see more in the city today.
Alright, that’s all for now. Having a great time, and it’s nice that it feels like a real vacation this time!! Going to Fukuoka and then Osaka, that was nice, but I had the visa issue looming over my head the whole time. Now I’m able to just relax and really take in a different country. China is turning out to be a very pleasant surprise so far!!