the next leg of the trip was a train through the gobi desert from ulaanbaatar to the chinese border. we prepped ourselves because we had heard horror stories about mongolian trains – people being robbed as they slept and how the sheets would reek of mutton. but it was quite nice – probably the nicest train ride all summer in fact! we arrived in the chinese border city of erlian and spent the day wandering the streets until late afternoon when the sleeper buses starting their trips to beijing. these chinese sleeper buses were one of a kind – i’d recommend trying one if you ever get the chance! very early the next morning we arrived in beijing!… at an unknown location. we allied ourselves with a group of austrian bros and sweatily set out down a dark beijing street. a number of hours later, we made it to our destination – tiananmen square! just in time for the morning flag raising! there were tens of thousands of people there at 6 am, and most of them wanted a picture with us, the pasty whites! i knew i was going to love china!
beijing is an amazing city! a few highlights:
-ate scorpions which were six inches long!
-bubble tea!
-great wall of china! (my sister got groped on the bus, had a very uncharacteristic yet retrospectively funny hypoglycemic breakdown because we didn’t get a chance to eat for 13 hours, and i had some very serious and very unfunny issues of my own that resulted from chugging three liters of water immediately before a long bus ride, but overall still a pretty good day!)
-some gritty punk rock live in some underground venue in some suburb that took me four hours to get to, but it was worth it!
-temple of heaven
-finally tracking down the elusive peking duck!
-oriental plaza shopping mall: kind of – i know i overuse this word especially regarding malls but its because i mean it – amazing!!!
-food, food, and food!
-hanging out with some of my sister’s friends who are in china to teach english – it was a lot of fun!
-forbidden city!
basically beijing was super enjoyable and compared to the locales we had spent the rest of the summer in, quite luxurious and very easy to get around! i mean, subway stops labeled in english? beijing 1, moscow 0! it was wonderful and 30 days would have been better than four, but life must go on!
