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