Beijing

Wow. I know where I should start, but it's so difficult because my entire trip to Beijing and Kunming was absolutely amazing and breathtaking. I went with a great group of people, which made the trip that much better.

On April 30, I left on a 24-hour train from Hong Kong to Beijing with Jenny, David, and Weck. I thought we had booked a 4-person soft sleeper compartment, but to my initial unfortunate surprise we ended up in 2 different 6-person hard sleeper compartments. Hope that makes sense. It's amazing how people can be packed into a train. All four of us had the top bunks too, which could be likened to a coffin. Kinda scary, huh? But I hardly spent any time up there, we stayed in the dining car for most of our awake time since it was impossible to sit up on our top bunks. Played some Mahjong, read, and finally went to bed. The lights were turned on at 7:00am and then they started serving breakfast at 7:30, but I couldn't get out of bed til after 8. Then we spent the whole day in the dining car, and waited to arrive in Beijing.

Since we didn't get settled into our hostel until around 5ish, we decided to just wait for Linea and Sabrina to get to the hostel so we could go find some dinner. I'm so glad they found the hostel okay since it's located in a hutong. Hutongs are winding alleyways that are a part of history in China. We asked the staff to point out the closest night market, and we finally found Donghuamen Night Market, known for its interesting selection of snacks. I had all sorts of snacks, but nothing too crazy. They had silk worms on a stick...starfish, baby sharks, seahorses, snake, etc. None of us tried the crazy stuff.

The next day we walked through the Forbidden City, Tian'anmen Square, and the Temple of Heaven. Our hostel was located in a great location just 5 mins. north of the Forbidden City. Once we took a winding way out of the Forbidden City we saw the picture of Mao and wanted to get a closer look. BIG mistake. That just led us right back into the gate of hte Forbidden City and the guards wouldn't let us straight back out, so we had to take another 30 min. detour. I was slightly unsatisfied with China's inefficiency at that point, but once we got to Tian'anmen Square we were bombarded by Chinese tourists wanting to take pictures with the Caucasians in our group. At the end of the day we went to Temple of Heaven, but had to stroll through quickly since things were closing and we had to get to dinner. For dinner we went to a famous Beijing dumpling house and ordered tons of dumplings by accident, but the total was only about 70RMB, which is about 10USD for 6 people! Amazing!

The next day was our 10km hike or 6 miles from Jinshanling to Simatai. My quads hurt for a few days after that. But it was all worth it for the views and the satisfaction completing the hike. Linea and Weck were definitely my motivators since they stayed ahead the entire time. Linea would even run ahead up the gravity defying stairs in order to take pics of us etc. I thought she was crazy. Around tower 18 we stopped for lunch and had a picnic on the Great Wall. It was a much needed break and refueling time. There were 30 towers for us to get through. Afterwards we took a zip line down and got to ride a little boat to our meeting point. It's hard to describe the whole trek across the Great Wall. I know many of my pictures look the same, but each view is different and special to me.

The next day we took it easy since it was the day of our Peking Duck reservation and we were meeting up with Stephen, a fellow UNC Glober. Amazingly we were able to meet him at the Olympic area, so we walked around and went inside the Bird's Nest. Surprisingly, it seemed a lot smaller than on TV. From there we took a metro and found the Hongqiao market, or Pearl Market. Tons of fakes and miscellaneous items for sale there, but I was able to bargain hard for a few key items, like a pearl necklace, blush brush, and "silk" scarf. Then it was time to find Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant. I was really excited since I looooooove duck and I was going to meet up with my KKG sister!! It was so awesome seeing her again and it makes me look even more forward to getting back to UNC. It took us awhile to find hte restaurant since it was located in a hutong. Dinner was delicious and we were all satisfied afterwards.

Our last day in Beijing was spent at the Summer Palace. A relaxing day and saw tons of beautiful scenery. We even took peddle boats across the lake, but the current was really fighting us. We got stuck under the bridge and had to give up and just go back so our time wouldn't run over.

I know this post is slightly haphazard, but I will update soon on Kunming and all of my pics are posted on Picasa now!

Enjoy!