Ok, this is it. The start of my adventure.

The flight from Tokyo to Beijing was uneventful – I watched a few movies while trying to get up-to-date on blog posts and photos. As we descended into Beijing, I watched from my window seat, waiting to break through the clouds. I kept watching as the plane got lower and lower, and then started to see apartment block after apartment block below me. As this stage we were only a few hundred meters above the ground, and I realised that it wasn’t clouds, it was pollution that was occluding the city. More and more of these apartment buildings sailed underneath, and just before we landed, I saw a huge shanty town underneath the runway approach. This should be interesting I thought to myself.

Beijing International Airport is something else tho. It is HUGE. The satellite terminal I landed at must have been the size of at least 4 football fields. I quickly passed thru customs and the two IR heat cameras they had set up to detect sick people and found a comfortable chair in the arrival lounge coffee shop, awaiting my travelling companion Francis to arrive.

He arrived a bit later, thanks to a delayed flight and we took the first train into the city. There was a bit of confusion about where we would meet our host, and how to catch a cab in peak hour, but we made it to Echo’s apartment without too much problem. Echo and Sam were our CouchSurfing hosts in Beijing, and yes – we did sleep on their couch (and floor). They were awesome hosts, giving us food, shelter and internet – everything a traveller needs.

Our first order of business was getting train tickets to Mongolia. Echo made a few phone calls on our behalf and found out where we needed to go the next day to get them. In the morning it took us a while to find our way to the travel office, which was closed for lunch by the time we got there. So we decided to try buying at the train station – but to no avail. We were pointed in the direction of the CITS (China International Travel Service) at the Beijing International Hotel. It was only a block away, so we walked there only to find the entire hotel (and every other hotel on the street actually) barricaded up by police and security personal. There were two big Chinese political conferences being held in Beijing over the time we were there and security was tight everywhere. We were about to give up and walk back to the first place, but a lady on the street ‘randomly’ asked us if we were looking for train tickets to Moscow. Random. She made a call on here mobile, had a quick conversation and handed me the phone. The person at the other end was asking for our passport numbers. I asked a few questions, gave our passport details and was told to come back in 10 minutes. Sure enough, 10 minutes later there was a man standing on the other side of the fence with 2 tickets to Ulaanbaatar with our details on it.

We were close to Tian’anmen Square at that point, and decided to walk down at check it out. The security there was pretty intense. All bags were getting x-rayed and everyone was getting patted down before they could enter the square. And by everyone, I mean the Chinese nationals – tourists were spared the pat down. There was a huge number of Chinese in the square, and very little western tourists – which I found interesting. It was fairly windy that day, and negative degrees in temperature so we decided to move on. We were going to check out the Forbidden city, but by the time we got there in the afternoon they had closed.

We kept walking down the street and eventually found a shopping centre to shield us from the wind and warm us up.

As it was getting dark, the next order of business was dinner. Sam had pointed to an area on the map and we decided to walk there. Big mistake, as the distance was A LOT further than the map made it seem. We finally stumbled upon Beihai Park, which Francis recognised from his previous trip to Beijing and we had dinner at the Fangshan Restaurant. I was totally exhausted at that point, and it was really cold and windy outside, so we took a taxi home.

The next day, I wanted to check out the Bird’s Nest stadium to the north of the city. We caught the train there (more x-raying of our backpacks) and looked around the Olympic complex. Again, there was a huge presence of Chinese looking around too. We saw groups of them huddled together, trying to find some relief from the wind that tore through the open area around the stadium.

After leaving, we spent the afternoon haggling with sellers in an indoor market which was quite amusing. The trick is to take their price and reduce it by 2/3rds. At this point they shake there heads in disgust and counter offer. You can either stick to your original bid, or counter-offer, but after you have made your best offer, just walk away. The seller will always run after you and except your last price.

That night Sam and Echo took us out to dinner, at a very popular chain of hotpot restaurants around Beijing. So popular in fact that the one we went to was open 24 hours (hotpot at 4 or 5am in the morning??) and it was accepted that you might have to wait upwards of 2 hours for a table – even if you made a reservation! They had invited some of their friends alone too – Katherine and Chris (from Switzerland) and Roman. It was an excellent meal, and the conversation was fantastic. A great last night in Beijing!

We headed home and got organised for our train to Mongolia early the next morning!

This post is tagged Beijing, China