Beijing so far

Beijing is great. Its dirty, smelly, and full of people who try to gouge us on everything we buy. Starr and I have gotten use to using the yuan and seeing things priced in it, so when someone says 'give me 70 for this' we know they're on crack, because nothing here should cost that much (which is about $9). So far I bought long johns for $2 (everyone warned us that the Great Wall was going to be freezing), a Buddhist bracelet covered in Chinese characters for $1, a cool hat for just under $4, a stupid hat with ear flaps for $2, a ton of post cards, a charm for my backpack, and probably a few other things.

We left Kobe harbor on the 26th at noon and spent more than 2 days on the boat. The boat was fun and I met its Chinese nationalist captain. He speaks a bit of English and was always on hand for the meals. When he saw me, he, like all Chinese people we've spoken to, wanted to know where I was from. He then told me all American food was potatoes and hamburgers and how its no good. He then held up a Qingdao beer and asked me if I wanted one, adding 'its the best in the world.' I still hate him. The food on the boat was pretty bad but I stuck it to the Chinese crew by eating only the Japanese dishes available. They were also pretty bad.

Off the boat, we got to Beijing around 6:30 maybe. Getting a cab was fucking ridiculous. We said goodbye to our friend from Singapore, Christopher, and then made our way to the row of cabs in front of Beijing station. A bunch of guys were gathered near the front and approached us for a ride. We assumed they were with the long row of cabs directly behind them, but once we agreed to let one of them take us to our hotel, they tried to lead us way the fuck off into the distance. Starr said behind me, quietly enough so none of them could hear, 'theres no fucking way dude' and then just walked off in a different direction, trying to cross about 8 lanes of traffic in the process. I followed her. The guys all followed us. We told them something about getting food but they herded us back towards their cars. One of the guys was a legitimate taxi driver but he looked like he wasn't getting involved. Nice. We just left, quickly but casually, and could not for the fucking life of us figure out how to make a phone call. There weren't any pay phones nearby and when we found a government run phone center thing, the guy at the hotel couldn't speak a word of English and sounded really angry for some reason. We made our way back to the taxis after everything else we could think of didn't work and were, again, confronted by guys hanging out near the front of the line. I went past them to the taxi drivers but none of the real drivers were willing to take us and couldn't understand where we wanted to go. The sketchy guys all had cell phones and were dialing the number for us before we asked them to. We eventually went with a guy who had half of the teeth in his fucking head and an unmarked car a mile from the station. Brilliant. We agreed on 50 yuan, down from 180 with the first guys, but when he got us to our hotel that number became 60. He was cute about it though. I handed him 50 and he just kind of squinted, cocked his head to the side, and went 'mmmmmmmm...'

Finding the hotel was an adventure too. We are staying in one of Beijing's hutongs. These are really old alleys that are, while our guide highly recommends and are listed in '1001 Things to See Before you Die,' ghettoes. The thought flitted through my mind that we were going to get hacked up and sent back to the US as parts, but we were ACTUALLY where we were supposed to be. Imagine taking a drive down an alley that gets smaller and smaller and takes sharp turns that you're not even sure if the car can fit through, where the people are all looking at your car distrustfully and you see NO other foreigners, and the cab driver has to get out multiple times to ask for directions and no one even wants to talk to him. Our hotel is run by a creepy heroin addict that we call 'Lurch' and the bathroom smells like... there aren't even words.

We've become used to the hotel and now we even like it, but we were NOT happy when we showed up. I think it was culture shock to no small degree.

On our first full day we saw Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the hill behind the city where the last Ming emperor killed himself. We ate Peking Duck (so fucking good) at a really fancy-ass restaurant, treating our friend Christopher from the boat, and only spent $45. The second day we took an all-day tour of the city including stops at a jade factory, pearl factory, cloissonware factory, lunch, tea, the Great Wall, and the Ming Tombs. We only wanted to see the stupid wall, but all tours that are run by travel agencies include these tourist trap factory tours where you are required to spend like 20 minutes in the gift shop at the end. We went to not 1 but 2 fucking jade factories. Our guide gets paid by the government (all the factories were run by the government) so we couldn't skip them either. At the last factory we just gave up and tried to talk to the Chinese girls who worked there and they admitted they just wanted to practice their English.

Today we were going to go to the Summer Palace but gave up and shopped. Starr has bought quite a bit of stuff but I'm in this for the long haul so don't expect much to be sent home. Sorry guys. Lets see. I guess thats it for now. Tomorrow we'll do the Mao-soleum and the Summer Palace and we've already bought our overnight tickets to Xi'an. We leave at 9pm tomorrow night and I think I've spent $150 so far. Some big ticket items make up the bulk of that...