Day 2-Across the world, on the steps.

Day 2

Day two started bright and early for Alex and I. We messed around the hostel for awhile and then went to a Western style breakfast, which is really the one thing I can’t go without for more than a week. A solid western breakfast. Lunch, Dinner, Korean, Chinese, Thai, whatever. But breakfast. Eggs and toast every morning please.

Anyway, after breakfast we were coming back to the hotel, planning on going out to the city after we tracked down Erin. She happened to be sitting on the steps to the hostel(we weren’t even sure if she was in Beijing, let alone waiting for us on the steps. She had made friends with, like the entire hostel-so we sat around the steps and talked with a lot of people for like an hour.

Then we decided to go shopping at the Silk Road Market-which really turned out to be the experience of the trip.

The Silk Road is something I don’t know that I can accurately describe in words. It’s a giant market of souvenirs and rip off goods. This is where I learned the second lesson of Chinese economics, everyone is trying rip you off. The first day you go to the Silk Road market is, well, you’re going to get taken. The first purchase was Alex. He wanted to buy a fake polo shirt. He asked, how much, they say $80. Alex knows he has to bargin, so he says “No, how low are you willing to go?” She says “$55” he agrees and purchases. Later in the vacation Taz would get the same shirt for $2.75.

I bought an imitation watch-which was really nice, except that it had moisture under the lens the second day I bought it-for $25(the real thing would be like $500). The definite definition of the market happened when I saw a pair of shoes which I thought looked nice. I stopped to look, the woman grabbed me by my arm and pulled me into her area.(They do that there, they are VERY aggressive) and asks “You like? You buy?” I just bought a similar pair of shoes in Seoul the week before so I really didn’t want, so I say no. She says “Please! Special Price! $175!”(The real things would be like $500) I say of course not, so she asks me what my “final price” is, I figure I’ll just say something outrageous she’ll say no and I’ll move on, so I say $17 dollars. She says $18! And I, well, I really can’t turn that down. So, I ended up with a pair of shoes I didn’t even want, but I’m glad I bought. So we all bought a bunch of crap we didn’t want. Erin spent all her money, and quite a bit of Alex’s as well.

We finished up shopping and meandered our way to this giant white temple we had heard good things about. It turned out to be completely amazing. It’s difficult to describe in words, but it’s a 50 acre man made lilly lake with a giant temple on an island in the middle. I’ll post pictures. It’ll do it more justice. We walked around, took pictures, the touristy thing. See pics for more.

After that we were pretty pooped(like an 8 hour day of walking up temple steps and haggling with Chinese people will do that to you)

We loafed around for an hour or so, and then headed out to the steps.

There we met up with some of the people we’d talked to earlier in the day, as well as some new folks.

Basically, when the sun goes down the steps in front of the Far East hotel are one big giant international party. It doesn’t hurt that you can buy 40 oz. beers for 25 cents either.

I spent the next few hours talking to Dirk and Marcel, both from Germany who had been in China for 3 weeks, and were on their way to Thailand. Riccardo and Rene from France, who were, strange fellows. As well as 4 Israelis who are really good people. We had some “lamb” kabobs for 6 cents each(they probably weren’t lamb, but they tasted good and we’d been drinking) and then we headed to club Vic. I won’t go into details about the club-let’s just say it was a great scene, and not something for a PG-13 blog. GREAT club though.

But, the cab ride on the way to the club was probably something I’ll never experience again.

We took two cabs, but the group of us who went to the club were as follows:

A South African(Erin)
An Englishman
2 Germans
A Chinamen
2 Israelis
Me
And an Iranian.

In one cab was Erin, me, the Israelis and the Iranian. The irony of that was not lost on us. And to top it off the Iranian’s name was “Ariel” and Erin was just drunk enough to ask “Are you named after Ariel Sharon?” Awkward silence. Which went well with the awkward Iranian who would later ask the Israelis (Both named Ren by the way) “If you can have a bomb, why can’t we have a bomb?” At this point though we were in the club, and I think “California Love” was booming at about 4,000 decibels, we had top shelf liquor, it was not the time to have a political and cultural exchange. So the night moved on.

If you know me though you know how cool that night was for me though. I love meeting new people from all over the world with all kinds of stories to share. So, sitting on the steps (QUARTER FORTIES) talking to people from 12 different countries all of whom have been crossing the world for months. And best of all, it’s all in English. God bless my language.

So, I finally got home around 6 AM. I managed to get a whole 3 hours of sleep, and then the next day started. The next day was a whole nother story.

(Short I know, but this portion of the story is really hard to explain in writing without writing like 15 pages. –and the movie I’m watching just finished:Jerry McGuire: so I’m done with today. I’m also purposely leaving things a little un-detailed to make it easier to read, and to give you a reason to talk to me when I get back)

Day 2 pictures:

The outer gate of BeiHai lake

The Towering White Pagoda

The lilly fields. Very Zen

Erin and I enjoying the Zen, and some tomato soup flavored chips.

Some weird cross dressing guys. I dunno.


The view from the top of the huge climb to the top of the pagoda.

I know the pictures are all kind of crummy, but there's a constant haze of pollution over the city these days. It rained every night, and was polluted and hazy every day. It's a historical city, but certainly not a very pretty one.