Fourth Day in Beijing

Today was probably the longest day of any on the trip, and of course I was doing it on about 5 hours of sleep. After I blogged about Day 3 I decided that instead of just going to bed, It would be more fun to hit up the hotel bar and see who was hanging out. Had a few drinks and then decided to head out to experience some of the night life in Beijing. There were 7 of us who ended up going out. The first street we went to had tons of different bars – it was decorated with tons of lights and decorations. They had everything from live bands to traditional Chinese music and rap. I even heard some Chinese man doing a cover of “Sweet Child of Mine”- hilarious. We decided to head down this ally to a back street and found this bar called smugglers – it was like a sports pub atmosphere. After that we took a cab over to Vix to try and meet up with a girl we met at that day’s company visit. It ended up being this huge club – everyone was all decked out (I was NOT). Even though clubs really aren’t my scene, we ended up having a fun time – they played some pretty good music too.

So, to start day 4 off we packed up all of our stuff and checked out of the hotel. After that we headed to a pearl factory and did some shopping there. We got to see the process of cultivating fresh water and sea pearls. After some shopping we hit up the Temple of Heaven. It was gorgeous and seemed to go on forever.

Next, we grabbed some lunch at a traditional Mongolian hot-pot restaurant. Basically everyone gets their own pot of boiling soup. In the middle of the table are plates of raw meat, seafood and veggies – you can take what you want and use your broth to cook it. I was really nervous to eat this meal – the uncooked meat sketched me out, and I really didn’t want to be sick for the overnight train. I ended up being fine, but a few of my classmates got a little sick or couldn’t really stomach the food.

After the hot-pot we hit up Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City – this is probably the most recognized place in Beijing. We spent some time taking pictures in the square and then headed over to the Forbidden City. We walked through the city for over 2 hours – all ancient palaces with traditional architecture and bright colors… I took tons and tons of pictures. As the sun went down we all got really cold. It seemed like the palaces were going on forever and we’d never make it back to the bus…when we finally did it was so nice to get some heat. Next we hit up a shopping street with high-end department stores and a huge mall. I went in the mall and stocked up on some candy for the train ride. I fought the urge to go to McDonalds for some fries! After that we got some dinner. I was really hoping for some noodles tonight, and I actually got some (turns out all we had to do was ask.. haha).

It was pretty late after this, so we headed to the train station… In all of the traveling I’ve done, this was by far one of the most hectic events I have ever experienced. The 20 of us got to the train station in Beijing…the first thing we had to do was put our bags through security screeners…there were hundreds of people trying to get through 2 lines. Nobody would just wait in line (cutting and pushing are not seen to be that rude of a thing in Chinese culture). This guy in front of me had a huge burlap bag of god knows what and he couldn’t move it around to save his life. I was just praying I wouldn’t get pick-pocketed or have anything stolen. Somehow we all made it into the station – we headed upstairs and waited in the soft sleeper lounge for about an hour until we could get on the train. There were such massive crowds of people, it was really stressful staying together and watching our luggage. We finally made our way through the crowds (all together) and boarded the sleeper train. The rooms were really tight, but we somehow fit all of our luggage in and got as comfortable as we could. I was so tired from the day of touring and going out the night before I passed out and slept the night on the train. Certain times in the night I’d wake up to the train whistle or the sound of us passing another train (pretty freaky), but besides that it was a pretty good night.