Asia 2008 – Day Ten
November 10th, 2008 - 9:36pm - Comments Off
Day Ten – Nov 10th 2008
Beijing
21:36 – Emperor’s Guards Hotel, room E
Another long day of travel. We said our goodbyes to our Vietnamese hotel at 5:30am. The young night clerk who had valiantly struggled with Justine’s bags up five flights of stairs the previous night had been sleeping in a sleeping bag across two chairs.
At this time of the morning Ha Noi’s traffic is almost non-existent. It’s so quiet it’s almost eerie. The same rules apply to traffic, however.
In the duty free we bought some souvenirs including a box of “Choco-Pie” which we’d seen throughout Vietnam. It was dry and pretty terrible. Our box of six only had five, we discovered later. No great loss.
We flew from Ha Noi to Guangzhou, and were treated to a beautiful hazy view of mountains from above. At Guangzhou we went through Chinese immigration and customs, which we thought was odd as transferring passengers usually do that at their final destination. The plane departed over 30 minutes late.
We knew we were over Beijing when the haze turned from a white misty colour to a dull brown grey. A pea soup style smog was over the city. Golden Hour gave us an orange ceiling but no shadows.
Our plane landed but we disembarked on the tarmac, along with six or seven other planes in a line. There were plenty of gates in the main terminal. I assume it is because these flights were a combination of International and domestic. We didn’t have to go through immigration after our bus ride along the tarmac.
After one too many “Taxi?” requests while in the airport, we decided to take the brand new Airport Express train. Not too cheap at 25¥ but the view of the eternally long tunnel was fun. Like we were a spaceship leaving a space station in a sci-fi movie. The security guard at the airport was a large Chinese man who put on a strong American accent when talking with us, eliciting giggles from his counterparts—and us, silently.
We switched to the Metro trains and squished in with the locals for a few stops, changing lines once in the process.
The map our hotel had given us was not detailed at all but we managed to follow it easily. Wandering into the right Hutong (series of small alleys) we turned too early and walked past the back of our hotel’s courtyard! A kind old fruit seller on a bike read the address—only in Chinese—and pointed straight ahead; we’d been so close!
Once we’d checked in we went for a walk in the direction of Wangfujing, a popular street. A food night market sells many foods “on a stick”—starfish, scorpion, cicada, silkworm, sea urchin and many more. I wanted something plain and spicy so had a chicken thing. Pretty good.
We walked till we hit the Forbidden City and walked around one section, missing Tiananmen Square entirely. As we passed a Metro station we entered and took the next one back to our hotel.
Photos taken today: 43
Photos taken to date: 2757
