Olympic Territory

After some last minute haggling on Khao San Road, I boarded a bus that they jam packed w/people for the airport. Checked in, went through customs and got a taste of what to expect in China (I thought the Chinese woman behind me was going to climb into my suitcase! She was so close I had to separate us with my carryon bag!)...I enjoyed a *real* cup of coffee, changed over my remaining Thai Baht to Chinese Yuan and headed for security...

Personal space issues were quickly becoming apparent as all the Chinese people rushed in a mad herd for the door the moment they opened the gate. I thought...'can't we all just settle down? The plane isn't going anywhere without us...'

On my Egypt Air flight, I sat next to a 22 y/o Thai kid who spoke minimal English. I silently laughed at him playing with a Rubix cube...'good luck, kid', I thought. I was in and out of sleep, reading my book, had a delicious vegetarian Egyptian meal and when we just about ready to land after 5 hours of flying I noticed the kid had completed the Rubix cube!!! I was enormously impressed...I shared w/him that my attempt at completing one of those was to switch the stickers around as a kid. Don't know if he fully understood my stupidity or if he was just smiling and nodding at the American's babbling...

Landed in Beijing airport and it was pretty quiet. We arrived to the huge terminal which felt more like a planetarium with enormous arched ceilings w/scattered white lights. Went through customs quickly and waited for what seemed like forever for my bag...all the while dealing w/people pushing and shoving to get to the baggage carriage. What is with them??

Wasn't sure how I was going to make it to my hotel since no one seemed to speak English. Fortunately I found a woman in line for the taxi stand that did. She called my hotel for me to ask for their "Chinese name" and she wrote down the 3 line-long name on my confirmation paper. Thank God! I had no problems getting a taxi after this! We drove the 20+ kilometers to the Courtyard Marriot (after my last experience I was definitely not messing around w/any Chinese so-called "perfect" hotels). It's Chinese New Year so everyone was setting off fireworks all throughout the city. Red lanterns decorated the streets and windows of people's apartments. There were lots of highrise buildings...even more so than Bangkok.

I arrived at the Marriot and Hadas was of course, in the business center checking her email. It was so nice to meet up again after being apart for a week. We decided to go to K-TV Party World...a place down the street, karaoke and dinner buffet. We got our own private room and dinner buffet...was very similar to Yakatori Boy in Philadelphia but w/more music selection! The buffet was not good. I don't know what the food even was. I picked at the rice, and tried some vegetable dish but everything else just looked a little too scary...too many bones, covered in an unidentifiable gelatinous substance, are those tenacles??

Karaoke was awesome as usual...but even more so b/c it was Beijing! We paid for one hour but of course that wasn't long enough. The classics...beatles, madonna, beyonce. It was just the 2 of us but we had a great time!

Afterwards we stopped at 711 b/c I was starving! By the way, did I mention that 711's have replaced the Starbucks of the states? Instead of a Starbucks on every corner, there is a 711 on every corner here. Starbucks are every Other corner. Anyway, 711 was bare. For a moment, I wondered if there was a report of an upcoming natural disaster or storm? There was literally nothing on an entire wall of shelves. Alongside mixed nuts and raisens were dried meats and fish. All were expired. They had rows of authentic ramen noodles...and in the end I opted for a box of chips ahoy cookies. They taste different in China, but still a nice filler ;)

Then we moved on "XX". At first I was like, 'Hadas, where are you taking me??', but turns out in Chinese, XX means internet, not porn. We took the elevator up to the 3rd floor, cheap, non-smoking, internet cafe. Except everyone was smoking. The girl who helped us is studying Business English in Beijing and said that it's no use to even ask them to stop smoking b/c no one listens. I couldn't stand it (which is why I'm late on blogging...). I almost used the bathroom there until I noticed a sickening stench of urine about 20 feet away from it. Decided to wait till we got back to the safety of our Westernized marriot bathroom...

It was sooo nice to go back to our carpeted, luxurious room! My bed had a thick, white fluffy duvet and 2 REAL pillows! On trip advisor someone had complained about the beds being hard here...obviously they haven't traveled throughout the rest of Southeast Asia! The beds were wonderful...I slept like a baby, for all 4 hours. In the morning, I enjoyed the best shower of the trip...burning hot water, water pressure that could power wash your driveway. And a hairdryer!!

The girls had booked a trip to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs through the hotel that was going to cost 470 CNY (or more than $70 USD). In my Lonely Planet book, it said that hotels charge an infuriating price of up to 300 CNY. With this, we decided to cancel the trip and go at it on our own...