Note:  I’ve decided to post these in installments, since I’m lazy and it’s taking me forever to put them up.  There will be Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, then Days 5-7.

Well that was quite a trip.  We went to Beijing from 12/26/08 – 1/1/09.  ALL the pictures from the trip can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/st-christopher/.

Day 1

After getting to Incheon Airport in South Korea several hours before our flight departed, we bought a few books and settled down to wait (Megan got Twilight, which she loves, and I bought Stephen King’s latest Duma Key, which I’m enjoying at the moment still).  Upon arrival in Beijing at 2:30 in the afternoon, we noticed that OMG THERE WAS A SHITLOAD OF SMOG.  I’d actually never seen smog before going to Beijing.  It was quite an experience, not being able to see more than 150 meters away.  The first three days ended up being like that.

So, after taking the shuttle bus from Beijing Airport (which is HUGE, btw) to downtown Beijing, I made the first huge mistake of the trip.  The #1 mistake I was warned by friends of ours who’ve been to Beijing not to make.  As soon as I stepped off the bus, a man came up to me and asked if we needed a taxi.  I SAID YES.  What is wrong with me?  I show him the address, and I was amazed because he said he knew EXACTLY where it is and he’d take us there right away!  We got into his bicycle-cart-mobile taxi.   After a 1 or 2 minute bumpy bike taxi ride, we got out and he told us, right away, “¥500.”  Now, the thing is, 500 Yuan (or RMBs) is roughly speaking US$100.  I wasn’t just pissed.  I was livid.  This guy, with his phony grin and cocksure smugness was going to try to rip us off just because we’re Westerners.  We told him we didn’t have ¥500 (we actually had like ¥4500 between us, but I wasn’t about to let this jerkoff know that).  So, he instead told us, “Okay, €50.”  Apparently this guy got an A+ in math class.  I showed him all that I had in my pockets (about ¥40 and W5000), and told him that my wallet had been stolen (when I travel, I always keep my wallet hidden in a zipped up inside pocket).  We got into a shouting match, which involved Megan and I both telling him we didn’t have any money left, he had all of our money now and we were going to starve because of him.  He got an angry look on his face and said, “This is not a lot of money.  Happy New Year’s.  It’s to the right.”

As it turns out, it WASN’T to the right.  This asshole had biked driven us to the wrong part of Beijing, the 19th biggest city in the world.  We were lost.  I had an address (in English) of the hostel, but no idea on a map where it was.  We stopped at a luggage store, in a post office, and finally at the Beijing Hotel to find directions or a map to at least show us where it was.  Everybody was very, very helpful.  I can say that Beijing probably had the most helpful people I have ever met in my entire life.  They were willing to do whatever we needed to get us where we were going without expecting any sort of payment or recompense in return.  The hotel managed to show us our hostel’s location on a map, and then called a proper taxi (one that was metered) to drive us there, with the doorman explaining directions to the taxi driver (as we found out, taxi drivers in Beijing don’t have a clue where anything is in their own city, unless it’s a major landmark).  The taxi driver took us to the right street, but searched up and down it, not being able to find the location of the hostel.  He even got out and asked random people where it was, and they pointed all over the place.  We finally just paid him and got out, deciding to chance it ourselves.  We asked several people, including the many military guards that were all around (and they were very nice and helpful, not the godless communists you hear about all the time), and they pointed us in all sorts of different directions.  Just when we were about to give up, one soldier told us exactly how to get there.  Megan saw the signs for it, and we went down a deep, dark, dirty alleyway (called a “hutong”) until we found it.

Trust me, it looks much worse at night.

Luckily, though we got there late (it had taken us nearly 4 hours to find the hostel), they had not rented our room out to somebody else.  The name of the hostel is Sitting on the City Walls Courtyard, and I recommend it to anybody going to Beijing.  The staff is incredibly helpful, the food is good and cheap, they have plenty of good deals on attractions all around, they have two computers with internet that you can use (for free), if you have your own computer, they have free WiFi, they provide towels and a hair dryer at no charge, as well as linens, and, well, there are too many great things to describe.  The only bad things I would say about them is how difficult they are to find, and they only take cash.  Everything else was perfect.  So anyway,  the owner Rick helped us out with showing us where there were good, cheap places to eat that didn’t have touristy prices.  He showed us how to get to all the major attractions.  They even have daily plans printed out for all the major things if you want to see several things in one day and aren’t sure how to do it, in ways that can save you money (trust me, if you ever go, use the public buses and subways, they are SO cheap).  He told us that the hostel was located at the city center, within a 1-km radius of all the major party leaders’ private courtyards, so it was patrolled heavily by military, thus making it the safest area in all of China.

So the rest of the night was spent finding dinner (at a KFC, of all places) and relaxing at the hostel.