So I haven't blogged for a couple of days. Last night I was too tired and on Wednesday I didn't because 1. We didn't do much and 2. Natwest ruined my day
Back to where I left off anyway. We stayed up in the bar til about 1 before we realised we had the same channel in our room so we watched the football there. It was good to watch it, even though I didn't particularly enjoy it, too stressful! But it probably wasn't the best idea as we just seemed to be getting over the jetlag. As it didn't finish til 4.30am we slept well into the afternoon the next day. All we did was go out locally for food, somewhere recommended in the guide book with an English menu. As the restaurant name was in Chinese we were looking for the street & door number. Chinese door numbers are not in a real order!!! We found the place which should have been 2 numbers away from it but then all the numbers changed!! After wandering around for over an hour we gave up and went to what looked like a Chinese fast food place, everywhere else seemed to shut at 9. I had a beef pepper stirfry. It was ok. It came with a couple of side dishes as well which I had no idea what they were so didn't touch them! 1 of them looked like half of a fermented egg though, it definitely wasn't normal egg as it was hard & a funny colour. I had to stop looking at it before I threw up! Ben had beef noodles in a soup.
On Wednesday I went on my online banking to discover my main account had disappeared which scared me a lot!! After lots of emails to Mum & Dad who were speaking to them and costly phone calls that kept cutting off due to the amount of money it took from my credit (and then I couldn't top up my phone as I had no card!!!) they had cancelled it as I had tried to book a flight with Asia Airlines before we set off. So although I had gone into the bank last week to tell them where I was going and to ask them to make sure this didn't happen, I am now without a card. They did the same to Ben as well but managed to unblock his card so at least we have some money. I'm waiting to hear from them but they better send my new card over by courier or there'll be trouble!!
On Thursday we went to see the 2008 Birds Nest Olympic Stadium. It was spectacular and a nice sunny day. Then we went to see the Temple of Heaven, where they used to make sacrifices to God and pray for good harvests etc. It was unbelievable. The amount of time, work and money put into some of these places is crazy. Last night we went to eat nearby where we'd seen a few Westerners eating and it turns out it was because there was an English menu. There were intestines (I'm sure that must be what Ben had the other night!) chicken feet and lots of other horrible things! There really wasn't anything I fancied so thought I'd play it safe with fried chicken with lemongrass. It looked like it had a few chillies in it so thought it wouldn't be too plain. So the chicken arrives and I take a bite, only to find that I just have a piece of bone in my mouth. All the chicken on my plate was attached to bone. Can you imagine trying to eat something like ribs with chopsticks?! It wasn't easy and I didn't manage to eat very much, I concentrated more on the rice. I was v disappointed and wasn't full. Ben had pork with spring onions which was quite nice but all the pork had quite a bit of fat on it.
Today we're planning to go to the Summer Palace, a night market and hit the bar street to try and find the football.
I am really missing hair conditioner, a hairdryer and hair straighteners...