Sun 29/06/08 23:05

There hasn’t been any place for me to use the internet until now. So what I’ve been doing is writing at night and just saving the entries until I’ve had internet access. So everything that you are reading was written days ago in some cases.

To make matters even more difficult I have to retype my entries into a pc because I can’t hook up my computer directly to the internet. So there may be mispellings, and typos

Sun 29/06/08 23:01

It’s 8 pm right now and I’m sitting on the roof of the hostel I’m staying at… a beer in one hand and a cigarette burning to my left. All the big city sounds are around me, the horns honking, dogs barking and the hum of traffic not far away. So is this perfect or what? It looks like I spoke too soon. I was sitting here and a friend came up to work on his computer too, and as he sat down it started to rain…So now I’m sitting in my room, the beer is at the other side of the room and I’m out of cigarettes… I guess one of life’s little jokes.

The Forbidden City was impressive. The first impression that I had was how large it is. Not large in the sense of tall, but large in the shear amount of space that it takes up. If you’re into Chines movies and have seen movies like Hero where the city, or stage made up to look like the city, is used– that’s what it looks like. For some reason I thought The Forbidden City was more of a palace, but somewhere along my walk around, I realized that it was indeed a city.

One of the things that kind of surprised me is the Chinese people. I was walking around today, actually I was lost looking for The Forbidden City, stopped at an intersection and a kid comes up to me and starts a conversation. Now I’ve lived in Dubai for about a year, and no one has ever done that, anyway it turns out that he’s having an exhibition at a local art gallery in the cultural center of Beijing. So as we walk I find out that he’s graduating from the local art institute and has some of this work displayed there.

It’s been a real experience so far and although I could probably keep writing, I think I’ll end for now.

Tomorrow is Tiananmen Square.

Sun 29/06/08 22:44

I’m in Beijing, China and to be honest it’s everything I hoped it would be… with some reservations.

First, the flight from Dubai was pretty uneventful, and really relaxing which was a good thing. After about 3 months planning this vaction I was all nerves trying to second guess what I needed, and of course, what I forgot. Everything flowed better than I could have hoped for though, not a a single glitch.

Second, the flight from Doha to Beijing was about as bad as you could possibly image. I waws stuck in an aisle seat in a completely packed aircraft. Now, I’ve been in that situation before and although it’s kind of a pain, it’s livable. What really started to wear on me was the guy sitting next to me. I don’t know where this guy came from but to be honest he was probably the worst example of natural selection that I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to go into details about him, but lets just say that he didn’t or couldn’t control his bodily noises.

When we got to Beijing we landed about five minutes late, about 1410, but there wasn’t any empty parking spots for the plane so at first we waited for about 20 minutes and finally the pilot apologized and the had to move to let other planes by, so we taxied about the airport for another 20 minutes. It was really quite strange, but we finally made it.

Beijing is in many ways an average large city. It has its traffic jams, honking horns, massive amounts of people and everything else that goes along with a city this size. Where I’m staying is different though. I’ve got a room at a hostel in the oold part of town. It’s got really narrow streets running in between the houses, and I use the term streets loosely. They are basically one-lane roads, packed with shops, people , and bike riders that wind along.

Anyway about Beijing, it’s remarkable in so many regards. Probably the biggest for me is putting history into context. It wasn’t that long ago, that when I though about China I thought that the people all rode bicycles, pushed carts in the streets, and lived a very humble lifestyle. I’m sure for some this is still true, but for many it’s not. BMWs seem to be big with the Chinese.

Tomorrow I head to The Forbidden City

Thu 26/06/08 12:34

Okay, so everyone told me that I should leave at least four hours early if I want to make sure that I don’t miss my flight… so here I am in front of my gate three hours before my flight leaves. :) Oh well. I guess when it comes down to it, I’d rather be here and ready to go, than to be stuck in traffic thinking that I was going to miss my flight.

One good thing about this airport is that it first has free internet, and second it has free electrical plugs, so I can check email and then watch a movie before my flight.

One of the not-so-good things about this airport is that it’s really big and really crowded. We’ll see how it compares to the airport in Beijing. My guess is that Dubai will seem relatively spacious.