1st day in beijing.

Not sure this is going to work, or will even be what i wrote. For some reason, china won't let you access certain thing son internet. Can't access BBC !!!, can't actually access my blogger, however i managed to get to this page to post something. but i have been told. in China they have people reading everything that goes on there PC, even this. and is you write certain words and things, they will edit it, or will not let it post. so fingers crossed this works. Hope in thailand i can see it.

Finally made it to beijing. arrived about 10:00am. and what pollution. ouch couldn't see a thing when we were landing.

Anyway got of the airplane, made it to the bus shuttle service, which i was told would take me to the international beijing hotel. from there i was meant to have a 30-40 min walk to the hostel.

But..

Nothing is that simple when your a "Shell". So got on the shuttle bus i was told goes to international hotel. No, it went no where near the thing, well not that i could see. maybe i missed the stop, i was told it was the last one, but when i got kicked off the bus i couldn't see any international hotel.
Anyway i got off, and a tut tut driver said he could take me to the hostel, for 50. i thought well i don't trust these tut tut drives but 50 yuen is about 3 pounds, so i got in the back.
wow - that was an experiance. One thing i have noticed, is beijing is a mad house for driving, no one seems to care. chinese people walk straight infront of traffic who have to stop. tut tut weave in and out of traffic (scarey). oh yeah beijing people love there horn, you here it everywhere you go.

Anyway tut tut stopped, told me it was down this rd, and i was there. I give him 50 yuen, no no no. he meant $50. 400 yuen. so i stand there and argue a bit, but being the first hour i was here thought best to just give him money.
However it turned out i was no where near the hostel. so it was a walk round to find it. not that easy. All i had was english address, which no chinese people could read, including taxi's. So i was shitting myself, thinking i am 5161 miles away from england. and no one knows where i am staying. great.

Oh yeah i forgot to say it was pissing it down, big time. roads where flooded and everything.

Hence i was getting drenched. great. all wet through to the bone. no idea where i am, and no idea where the hostel is. I even tried phoning the hostel to see if they could tell me where i was in junction with the hostel. No they can't help either. great.

Anyway i go into a few big hotels. most as i said can't read english, so they can't help. but one chap helped me. Thank the lord for this bloke. He called the hostel, got the address, wrote it in chinese for me, incase i needed it. But however by the time i had found someone to help. i was actually only a rd or 2 away.

Anyway eventually found the place. its down a little alley, but once you get to the ally it is cleary sign posts.

So got to hostel, which is rather nice,. looks kind of new, but made out traditionally. i'll post some pics of it soon.

Ok well now i am at the hostel and changed my clothes. I decided to get a bite to eat as it is now 13:00. Well went for what i thought was a safe option. cheese and ham sandwich. Ham here is not ham. its more like spicey shit. Anyway took about 2 bites of that, was nearly sick from it. So gave that up and eat the 15 chips that came with it.

Not doing well so far. So i was feeling a little nevous at this point. But i was expecting that being the first day, and after the morning i had, i wasn't surprised.

so i hung around here for a while. Still raining heavy. Actually it rained all day. So anyway i got a taxi to a shopping mail. Walk round that for a bit. Was really big, however 3 floors had just pearls. !!!

Brought an umbrella from the mail, along with some sandels (leather ones) managed to get the women down from about 90 pounds to 62 pounds for the sandels.

The day is getting better.

So now i have an umbrella i decided to walk round a bit. found a nice little coffee shop, stopped there and had a coffee.

I must admit china is quite sad. while i was on the bus from the airport, i can see lots of familys just all huddled under bridges, with nothing. children and all.
But the most sad thing i have seen so far, was at the coffee house, a man was coming down the road. now imagine its really really raining. I can see he is dragging himself along the road with his hands. When he gets closer he has one leg out front like he was sitting cross legged, and somehow the other one is up is back and is foot is behind his head.
Very sad i thought, he was pulling himself along with a old shoe in one hand and a old paint pot in the other.
Well it looks like he was just trying to beg outside the coffee shop. as there was a few foriegners. Anyway no one was paying attention, although i swear he was trying to catch my eye. so he dragged himself back off, sitting again under a bridge.

Very sad.

So went back to hostel, found the information desk, which recommended a place where there are bars and resturants.

So just hung around the hostel really due to the rain, watched a dvd. which again makes me laugh it has the message " this is for screening purpures only", blah blah blah. made me laugh. I was expecting it, i must admit.

The Hostel is rather help full, they supple taxi's and write where you want to go, give you a little chinese map to get back. which is really really handy.

Anyway got to this place with bars and that. was rather nice, it was just a big lake, with lots of bars and resturants round. Went into a Chinese Western resturant, after the sandwich i had i thought it was enough adventure of the food kind for that day.

Sit in what looked like a nice resturant, which the menu was on cd case's. !!!! strange. I choose chicken wrapped in spinch, in a tomato sauce. Was nice, however im not sure it was chicken, (actually i found out there chicken is actually cut up and mixed all together, but i have no idea where the actually meat goes. it was lots of bone and crap i think. ) but tasted ok.
It was just an appitiser, but came up in, what i can only call a 2 foot canoe, strange, but it was edable and wasn't bad tasting.

Finally some food that i can eat. Anyway just went to a bar, heard some chinese songs being sung live, wasn't bad, even though obviously i had no idea what they were singing about. music was nice though.

got back to hostel, and went to bad about 22:00, thought i could do with the sleep due to jet lac.