Asia 2008 – Day Fourteen
November 14th, 2008 - 9:56pm - 1 Comment »
Day Fourteen – 14th Nov 2008
Outside of Beijing
21:56 – Z19 train, car 8 beds 13 & 14
While I’m not totally healed, I did feel a lot better today; I didn’t need to sit at regular intervals.
We left our stuff in our fancy room, and because our card reader/hard disk had failed took a taxi to a nearby computer store. Out hotel kindly wrote the address in Chinese for us to show the taxi driver.
After some pointing, gesturing and writing down specifications (and bartering, even though it’s a shop) we left with what we needed.
Another taxi took us the 25-30km to the Summer Palace. Even though it’s such a long distance it’s still just considered to be “Beijing”.
The taxi driver managed to scam me (or made an honest mistake) by giving me a 1 Li Yuan note (1/100 of a Yuan) instead of a 1 Yuan note. Since it’s such a small sum (something like $0.0025 at present) it’s no big deal.
At this point we’re a bit over the Chinese architecture here in Beijing, as it’s almost froma 300-year period and many palaces, temples, pagodas etc are similar in design. The Summer Palace has some things of note, though, such as a large boat made of stone (called the “Marble Boat”, even though it’s not marble) which will never float, but looks like a Chinese paddle steamer. There’s also a 750+ metre long covered walkway and what I could only describe as a “Chinese Venice”. A street surrounded by buildings but the street is water, though quite shallow.
We spent much of the afternoon at the Summer Palace and—after a few failed attempts where they drove past, one waving—we caught a taxi back. The sun set in the hour-long ride to the hotel.
Collecting our stuff we took yet another taxi to the Beijing West train station—there are large waiting rooms for multiple trains with hundreds of people. Many eat large instant noodle bowls sold in the waiting rooms; some share and others refill with more water.
Our train tonight—the Z19—has a personal TV for each bed, though we have no idea what’s being said.
Tomorrow: Xi’an and the Terracotta Warriors! And food! Maybe!
Photos taken today: 257
Photos taken to date: 4021
