BEIJING II

The two main things that stick out from doing all the touristee excursions in Beijing was firstly the amount of people viewing the attractions and secondly the amount of Communist guards in the City, they seem to be guarding every building, whether it be a construction site, a national building or even a restuarant, one solider saluted me as I entered the premises, so I obviously saluted back!

We spent the last day exploring downtown by foot, visitng a tattoo shop, trying some local street food (vegetarian - i decided to eat any meat because it just looked too weird!) and then did a bit of electrial shopping.

With time to kill we decided to go back to Tinnaman square, we walked thinking it will only take 10 minutes but ended up taking about 30. Once we got there we took a few more pictures and video camera footage. By this time we were way too tired to walk back, and by pure luck we were approached by an old Chinese dude on a 3-wheeled bike who offered to take us back to our hotel for 30 RMB, perfect.

We sat on the back of the bike and he rode us across the street and two of his friend on their own bikes decided to join us. Nim said he wanted to go toilet first, so our bike dude dropped us to the public WC. Nim went inside and when he came out our rider said he needed to go so he gestured go with the other guys. So the younger dude took me whilst the other dude took Nim. It was a crazy ride we were taken to the bumpy back streets of Beijing, areas we would not have otherwise seen and it was a good experience, but then suddenly they stopped us almost near our hotel and then aggressively demanded we pay them 300 RMB for each bike that we used which is about a total of 30 pounds! We challenged this but out of nowhere two more guys came behind them. We had just litterally been taken for a ride!!!

We knew we had been hustled, but we didn't have enough money so i have him all i had, about 200RMB as did Nim, so we had just given these two about 14 pounds for a ride that we thought would cost 30p. I was so annoyed, frustrated and angry with myself that i allowed myself to be duped this way. We had done so well during our stay in Beijing, not falling for local rip off merchants and before this point actually spending less then we expected. If i had lost 14 pounds like that in London or on a holiday i would be okay, but this was from my backpacking budget and evey penny counts.

Nims was more philosophical about the whole experience saying what's done is done, we can't do anything about it now and not to worry about it and it kind of worked because a few hours later we were laughing about the whole expereince but in hindsight it sort put a sour taste in my mouth of the whole City. Was now more then ever looking forward to leaving Beijing and flying out to Sydney, where there will be loads of Sun and beaches.

We landed into Sydney City airport on a Tuesday morning and were greeted with grey clouds and terrential rainfall. Great!