Sun 17/08/08 23:50
I’m starting to convert some of the video that I managed to salvage from my camera. The best way to describe what happened is that the camera stopped working in Moscow, but it didn’t give any indication that there was a problem. I remember one time trying to view one the things that I taped and it wouldn’t come up on the screen, it kept saying “creating thumbnails.” That’s what it’s doing right now, but it never creates them. It looks like for now that everything before Moscow is okay, and everything afterwards isn’t.
Riding Camels in Mongolia
When we were staying at the ger camp in Mongolia, we were given the chance to ride either camels or horses. I chose a camel because I’ve riden the one hump type here in Dubai, and wanted to try out the Asian model, or two-hump kind. Adrian is the guy that is on the other camel, and he kind of got a rough deal. Notice how the back hump on his ride is collapsed. This gave him almost no back support.
From Beijing to Mongolia
This was my first train trip I’ve ever done, and it was an experience. I was like a little kid in the way I felt about it, going through tunnels, sticking my head out the window and filming some of the most basic things that nearly everyone else seemed bored with. What can I say, I’m just a kid at heart.
The Oriental Plaza
I wrote about going to the plaza in one of my early posts. It’s not really that big, but it’s packed with vendors and people. The women vendors are really agressive when it comes to selling. They will grab
your arm and hold you there until you buy something or wrestle your arm away. When I took the video for some reason I didn’t point it at stuff, so if you watch it, you will see bits and pieces of what the people look like, but not very much of who I was talking to or a lot of the faces in the crowd. You do get to hear what’s going on though, which is kind of funny.
Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and other things around Beijing
One of the days I was in Beijing I went to Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and then just walked around. I wrote quite a bit about the square and the city in my blog, so I won’t bore you with writing it again. The square though was incredible. You really have to be there to get a sense of how huge it is, and with the layout of the city being in a grid, you can see other large landmarks from the square. The Forbidden City is just like you can see in most period Chinese movies. It’s huge, something like 9k rooms, a couple huge courtyards, and a moat too. Off in the distance you can see a temple up on top of a mountain, that’s the last part of the video. It’s a little bit of a climb, but the view was great.
