Last week I got the chance to hit up another country in Asia. This time, China!
After arriving at the airport, I was anxious to see my friend, but customs seemed to make sure the reunion waited a little bit longer. They didn't believe my passport was mine. After 5 minutes of staring, I gave them my ARC card that I use in Korea. Apparently that didn't look like me either. So after giving them a 3rd form of ID, they let me through. I found my friend and we booked to Beijing!
As soon as we checked in, we were out the door. First stop, happy hour at Hooters. It's been forever since I've heard of happy hour since no where in asia has ever heard of this concept. After relaxing and filling our stomachs, we wandered down to the Silk Market. Oddly enough, we bought pearls here and not at the Pearl Market... Deciding we did enough damage for one night, we thought why not go out. We were told to check out Hou Hai and so we did. This was a great place. It was a huge lake with shops and restaurants around the entire thing. There were romantic restaurants with lights strung all around, bars with live music, and outside was one massive living room with couches everywhere. It seemed endless. It looked like a great place to spend the evening, but unfortunately for us, we got there late and everything seemed to be closing with a few exceptions.
Saturday we woke up early, well early for me. (10 a.m.) First stop, Tiananmen Square followed by the Forbidden City. I was surprised that we had to go through security before entering the train station and the Square, but I guess you can never be too safe. The place was packed. We wandered around, stopping to try on silly hats and pose for pictures. It felt like we were celebrities for the day. Random Chinese people would ask to take pictures with us throughout the day. Why? Because they had never seen a foreigner before. So why not go along with it? While walking through the Forbidden City, you would expect to see very traditional sights, then BAM there's a basketball court and laundry hanging on the line. Guess they're moving to modern times.
Next on our list was Chinatown. There was barely room to make it down the narrow, crowded streets. It was exactly what you would expect. Too many people, lots of strange foods on sticks, (like scorpions), and pushy salesmen. They would yell at you to buy things to a point where I thought at any given moment I wanted to punch one of them. Needless to say, we didn't spend too much time here. We trekked it to the Pearl Market next. Although we wandered around in the wrong direction for a while. We did some more damage then headed home for some R&R to prepare us for Bar Street later. Bar street was a blast. We met a lot of different foreigners from all over the globe and turned the place into one huge party. We stayed out all night and enjoyed live music, good company, and strange drinks, like bowl jobs.
And how could we forget, The Great Wall of China. Safe to say, it was the worst taxi ride of my life. It a long ride, but we finally made it after 2 hours of traffic and getting car sick, up the wall we went, taxi driver and all. It was a perfect day and there was not a soul in sight. Although you can only walk around for so long before you get bored.
We ended our trip with the a private concert from our taxi driver on the way to the airport. Beijing was a blast, but it's good to be home. Stay tuned...
Peace & Love,
Elissa Rae
