Beijing is Peking is Beijing

We're back! Our trips were amazing and now we've only 1 month left in Korea and lots to do before we go, so these posts from our travels are going to be short on words and heavy on pictures.

It's strange to throw Beijing in a trip as an afterthought, but it seems like it's common enough judging by all the travelers we talked to. I wish we'd have had 1 more day there, but we slammed all that we could into the time that we had and it was better than all of us were anticipating. Shannon, Ryan, Brian and I all arrived in the evening on the 8th of August and jumped right into the fun. The first night we went to Tianenmen Square and Wangfujin snack street and the night market there for all the creepy crawlies there are to eat.

Tianenmen Square

Wangfujin Snack Street

The next day we rented bikes and did a bike tour of the city, stopping at all the major and minor sites like the Forbidden City, historic hutongs (alleyways that look like old Peking (which really is Beijing, an older name for it) from Kungfu movies), newer quaint areas, and the Temple of Heaven.

Roofs of the Forbidden City

Shannon and me in the FC

Here are half the photos. Shannon and I both went camera crazy, but she's gone to Australia and all over really for 2 weeks, so rather than wait on her to come back to show pictures, I'll just post her photos later when I get them. She's got all the Temple of Heaven photos too. For now, feast your eyes on these.

On our last day in Beijing it was Ryan's 30th birthday. We did an excursion to the Great Wall that our hostel put on. But most experiences on the Great Wall are filled with shoulder to shoulder tourists and hawkers yanking your arm to get a sale the whole time. Where we went it is technically illegal to go. The land is owned by villagers that live in the nearby valley, and they encourage people to visit, but other sections you must buy a ticket from the government to see. We had to hike up to our section, which is completely unrestored and original, crumbling and lovely. Our guide was a 73 year old woman from the village who does the hike everyday, and it wasn't a cake walk. One guy in our group spoke Mandarin, so he told us how her village took bricks from the wall in the 60s to build the village. Here are too many more of the Wall.

That night we took Ryan out to what we thought would be Shaolin Monks doing their cosmos bending kungfu magic, but it turned out to be a theater full of fat tourists and the performers were certainly not monks. They were wearing makeup and shimmery robes for goodness sake. That was the only fault of the China portion of the trip. And because of it we missed out on one more delicious Chinese meal. The menus are funny in China. Beside the normal fried rice and noodles and tofu and mushrooms and chicken are dishes with donkey, dog, horse, and sea cucumber. Someone should give us a travel show where we eat weird things. We're building an impressive resume.

Mongolia's coming as soon as I can sift through the photos, til then... watch this.
Ryan



Then Brian


Then my turn


And finally, Shannon eats it too.