Beijing, China

Firstly I want to say that one of the things Jo and I really enjoy doing is reading all the comments on the blog. So for those tuning in and commenting, thanks. It's like travelling with a little piece of home. As the days go by, we get several comments regarding the next anticipated blog entry.

We arrived in Beijing after 19 hours of car (muchos gracias Jordi), airports and planes. As expected, we were pretty jet lagged. The reality of not knowing a foreign language set in early and unquestionably. English signage is rare, and usually includes enough spelling mistakes to make you chuckle. Using our current vocabulary of Mandarin is usually difficult at best for them to understand. Regardless, we managed to hop on a bus to our hostal and immediately crashed for our siesta. So far that little tradition has served us well.

Jo did some sleuthing before we left Canada and booked us at the Red Lantern House. It's rated one of the top hostals in all of China. It's a great place to come back to at the end of a day (which usually includes about 3-5 hours of walking).

So far we've seen The Beijing Zoo with it's perpetually active Giant Pandas and massive aquarium, Tian'anmen square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China. This is a massive city with loads of people. Each alley way looks the same with a sketchy looking cart selling street meat but while one leads you to a bustling night market, the next one is a series of private homes called a hutong.

It's easy to see that we're in China as most of our photos have the token chinese tourist in the background. The weather in Beijing is pretty brisk these days, forcing us to unfold our warmer clothes for the first time. We're bracing ourselves for the long cold autumn in China before we head to the warmer climates of India, Sri Lanka and Australia.

The Forbidden City is essentially a massive chunk of land, located in the middle of downtown which was, in ancient times, reserved for the emperor of China, his wife, concubines and closest aids. It has 9000 different buildings, squares and monuments. It's a great place to appreciate traditional chinese architechture.

The Great Wall of China was awesome. A short minivan ride out to Mutianyu, just north of the city brought us to the base of the hills where the wall is open to tourists. This ride was made even shorter by the plethora of muzak Christmas songs played on the radio. The section we visited was rebuilt over 400 years ago. Originally said to be built around the 13th century, it's hard to imagine how this sprawling snake of a wall was constructed. It sits on top of a stretch of mountains which lies near China's Northern border facing Mongolia. We took loads of photos and even the best of the selection doesn't do it justice. We had a little picnic on the wall and decided not to take the tourist toboggan sled back down to the village. Instead we hiked down the side of the mountain.

Once at the bottom we walked through a gauntlet of tiny village boutiques with shop owners literally grabbing at you to buy their stuff. Yelling a fairly agressive "HELLO! HELLO!" They try to tempt you with 3 or 4 tacky looking t-shirts for 1 dollar. As you pass them by, and walk away, they immediately lower thier price by half and then half again. This gives you an idea of the cost of things our here.

Last night we took a local city bus along with about 80-90 other locals on the same bus (yup, we were the only whities) to a local market to get some snack food. It was hard to choose between the live scorpion on a stick, or the large black beetles on a stick. Alternatively, we could have also had fried seahorse, minature shark or an assortment of other small creatures you'd normally scoot away with a broom.

Our usual dinner consists of finding a restaurant that has to pass three very important criteria. No pictures, no english menu and no whities (read tourists). This is where we amuse the waitresses by practising our mandarin. With each dinner, the success rate of actually getting what we order increases. Normally we just order the beef dinner and wait to see what spicy rice surprise we'll get. A typical meal consists of a massive bottle of Tsingtsao beer (affectionally known as "une grosse" back home), a main meal and a side of rice. As tipping is not accepted, the bill for the two of us is a whopping 15 yuan or $2.25 Cdn.

Yesterday we played our first game of ultimate in six weeks with the gang from Beijing Ultimate league. We're a bit sore but happy because we got invited to pick up with the team for the annual Hong Kong Ultimate Tournament in the end of October. Today we're shopping for a set of cleats which we intend to put to good use.

Hope all of you back home are healthy and happy and thanks for all the happy wishes regarding the engagement and Jo's special day.