Month: April 2012

Exploring Beijing’s Mystic Forbidden City

Let’s catch up on the past few days. Monday saw us visiting Beijing’s most iconic sites: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Our hostel is conveniently located roughly 20 minutes walking distance from the two, which are located next to one another. They also happen to mark the ‘geographic centre’ of the city. Following the beaten tourist path we headed past Mao’s mausoleum, through Tiananmen Square and to the Forbidden City. Greg had left me only for a moment before Chinese tourists began to ask for pictures, which I was all too happy to oblige. After all, it was a nice diversion from someone trying to sell you something. Apart from that instance, nothing remarkable happened during our wandering. Following the Forbidden City we decided to make a department store our heading. We ended up shopping on a ten lane highway, flanked by towering department stores. H&M, Adidas, Nike, Only, etc. Everything imaginable. Making our way back to the hostel we made a slight detour through a hutong and quickly realized we were lost. While …

Beijing: My Overwhelming First Impressions of China

Well, we have arrived in Beijing, China and it is crazy! First let me recount our journey here. We packed up and left on Friday morning, Vancouver time. I had to chuckle when I noticed Greg’s had packed not one, but two travel pillows. As we walked the 200-m to the bus stop from Greg’s parents’ house we congratulated ourselves with a celebratory high-five. I looked over at his backpack and immediately noticed one of the travel pillows had fallen off. We had already lost an item, not more than 20 seconds into our trip. Too funny. The bus arrived promptly thereafter this moment so the pillow remains where it fell. We flew Air China and much to my misfortune I discovered my in-flight entertainment screen was broken. Did I mention this was a twelve hour flight? Flying north from Vancouver we actually passed over Comox (my hometown) which made me pretty happy and then onward past Alaska, Siberia and the Koreas. Beijing greeted us with a grey haze (which I am beginning to believe is character of the …