Our room, a private with two twin beds--it costs $10 more than the bunks so we sprang for it (I wouldn't next time, but it was my first hostel stay and I had heard about folks being loud and other not being able to sleep), didn't have hot water. I let the shower run for five minutes and then finally jumped in and out real quick after rinsing the grime off. Janetta did the same. We were not happy.
We went to the front desk and they insisted that we just had to run the taps (the sink and the shower) at the same time for 5 minutes and it would heat up. It didn't work. We tried again the next day, it still didn't work. From that day on, Janetta and I walked upstairs to shower. I love hot water.
So, Monday was our first full day in Beijing and Janetta and I had planned our day with hitting some of the major sites near the hostel. Leo's Hostel is located 10 minutes walking distance from Tienanmen Square--and therefore Mao's Tomb and 15 minutes to the Forbidden City's South Entrance (the one with the huge portrait of Mao)--so we decided to strike out in that direction and take photos of the square, the portrait and the outside of the tomb (no cameras allowed inside and it's closed on Mondays). The north end of the square was blocked off, we later found out some dignitary was touring Beijing that day and had the central part (the main attraction) of The Forbidden City blocked off as well as the portion of Tienanmen Square. So, our touring was slowed because of whoever it was, but we made our way across the square and up to the entrance of the Forbidden City.
Before entering the Palace Museum, we watched some Chinese military drills. It was pretty amusing since they were practicing on a rec area--there were volleyball nets and a basketball hoop--and a couple of the guys weren't in uniform but were still marching around the square in formation. Several Chinese tourists asked Janetta and me to take photos with them, why they wanted photos with White tourists I won't understand. So, we spent some time hopping around taking photos with random people and eventually made it into the Palace Museum.
The Palace grounds are really impressive, just the size of the place. It really is a small city. But, after a while, all the buildings start looking the same. Janetta and I made our way through the Forbidden City pretty quickly, with only a few minor foot traffic jams because of the dignitary having areas blocked off while s/he walked through. The garden was nice, but not really that expansive and we decided to push on with our day--but first I had to exchange some more money.
We walked from the north end of the Forbidden City around the western edge to the place on the map that was marked as a Bank of China, but there was no bank. This meant we had to ask a couple different people for directions. Turns out one of the side streets wasn't marked on the map so we had just turned half a block early. I got the money exchanged and we were on our way to find food then press on to the Temple of Heaven (a Taoist temple used to pray to Heaven for a good harvest). The lunch was much better than the one in Qingdao and our waiter was really attentive to my vegan needs, even double checking that it was ok that Janetta ordered meat. When we gave him a tip he didn't know what to do, but his boss just told him to take the money and say thank you (or at least, I heard her say "shey shey" and gesture in a way that would mean that to me). We had figured out tipping isn't the norm, but we really wanted to let him know we appreciated his work.
On to the Temple of Heaven. Another expansive grounds with buildings that all seemed pretty much the same, but they were different from the Palace so that was nice. There was more greenery and it was really refreshing to be surrounded by trees and grass as opposed to the tall, grey buildings of Incheon. Beijing is built out, much like L.A., but Korea builds up like NYC, so Beijing had a much more open feel to it that Janetta and I both enjoyed. But back to the Temple...
The Temple has four gates; North, South, East and West, we entered from the South and took a route that lead us to the West Gate then up to the North Gate, down through the center a bit to see the Temple and animal sacrificial areas, out to the East and down back to the South Gate where we could catch our bus back to the hostel.
We took a wrong turn and missed the East Gate, but were too tired to care and walked back to the South Gate to get the bus back and sit down for a bit. On our walk out towards the East Gate, we were passed by several older men (looked 70 so they must have been 80) running, shirtless through the park around the TofH. They were all ripped. Then one middle aged guy comes jogging up with a pained expression on his face, about 20m behind the bigger group. Figure that one out.
The Temple of Heaven was worth seeing, but I wasn't floored by anything other than the amount of power the kings and emperors were. Look at the pyramids in Egypt and Central America, that took so many lives and people to put together. Same with the Great Wall, thousands of people died building it and are probably buried in it. Versailles was built and drained the treasury then the people in nation in which it was built starved. So, when Janetta and I were walking through the FC and the TofH, we just kept commenting on how it was so typical of people in power to build 1)a fancy house and 2) a fancy place to worship. The irony kicks in when you read that the temple on the west side of the grounds for the ToH was for abstaining from luxury.
We hoped on the bus back to the hostel and waited for it to drop us across the street from where it picked us up. This did not happen. We went up a different street than we had come down and up the opposite side of the square. No big deal, maybe it turns around at the north end of Tienanman and that's the loop? Nope. Hmm. It's got to turn around somewhere. So, we sat and waited for that "somewhere" to become apparent. We were both tired and a little hungry, and Janetta kept us awake by asking questions and making observations. Well, mostly kept us awake, I did doze off a couple of times.
Finally, we passed several posh looking buildings (the 5th Ave or Rodeo Drive of Beijing) and decided we should just get off the bus since it seemed it wouldn't be turning around anytime soon. The traffic was terrible, we weren't moving. We had been in the same spot for fifteen minutes. We had passed metro stations, so we decided to try our luck on the subway. We pulled out our little printed map and noticed the silk market that Janetta had wanted to see was right around where we were. We had passed a building labeled "The Silk Street Market" but thought it couldn't be the market we were looking for since the rest of the place was so upper class. But, it was the market on the map, and with traffic as bad as it was we figured there wouldn't be any harm in checking it out while traffic cleared.
We swung into a Starbucks so I could get a soy chai latte pick me up, since it was only 6 or 7 and I was crashing hard. That and I love any excuse to get a chai latte.
We trekked back to where the silk market was and went inside. There was no silk. Just booth after booth of knock off (some good, some bad) brand clothing and cheap looking souvenirs, five stories of it. All the sales people were about our age and spoke enough English, Spanish and Russian to try and talk you into their "shops" and trash talk you or threaten you if you didn't buy something. I got called crazy several times and when I tried to give a top back to the saleswoman, she threw it on my shoulder every time I set it down. Eventually, I tried setting it on a different shop area so she would have to pick it up, but she just screamed, "That's not my shop, I'm calling the police!" So I picked it up and threw it into her shop and walked away. Then, she chased me down and took an additional 100 yuan off of her last price. I bought the shirt for a tenth of the starting price (600 yuan down to 60 yuan). That place is not for the thin skinned.
I don't remember anything else happening that night. We just chilled at the hostel and went to a bar in a hostel across the street with a few people.
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