Day 1 Beijing Tour

So my first impression of China lies somewhere between I hate it and I really just want to go home. For some reason the group we are with just doesn’t understand that we are tired. Also, it smells horrible like everywhere. It’s kinda nasty. And what is wrong with having soft beds and toilets that aren’t just holes in the ground? Ok, lets talk about the smell a bit more. When I was walking outside I turn to katy and ask what the smell is that I can’t stop smelling. The smell was everywhere. It was on the bus. It was at the airport. It was in the sky. Everywhere!!! Katy then tells me “Eric, that’s B.O.” B.O. as in “body odor.” It suddenly hit me: Chinese people don’t use deodorant. The smell from that point on was unmistakable. To add to this wonderful smell they don’t believe in any kind of sewage or plumbing systems that prevent smells from coming back up through the pipes. Ya you have all seen under your sinks how they have the little loops in the pipes. Those loops are very, very, very important to keeping the poop smell out of your hotel/apt/house/city. Very important.

Besides those general impressions the first day wasn’t too bad. We were able to go to Tienanmen square which is pretty neat and the Forbidden City.  The square is just an open square with like a cool statue but it was still cool to see.  So in  China they have squatty potties or like toilets that you squat over to go to the bathroom. Basically holes in the ground. Sometimes they have western style toilets. Well in the Forbidden City they have multiple locations to use the restroom, beit squatty potty or western toilet, so would somebody please explain to me why a mother is holding her 9 year old daughter over the garbage, in public, to do her business? There was a bathroom like 10 yards away! There are some things to figure out still in china…this would be one. Another thing that we discovered in the forbidden city is that Chinese people look at Americans like circus animals or celebrities. They stop what they are doing to stare at us. As they walk by they take pictures of us (some sneaky, others….not so much). Parents will often coerce their children to get their pictures taken with us. The children will shyly refuse but are so excited to do it. This is something that we actually kinda like, as long as it is not the creepy 40 year old men taking pictures of Katy. That’s just creepy. We don’t mind standing out a little bit. And we definitely don’t mind the cute little kids that love us just for being American.

The Forbidden City was huge. There were awesome buildings with very pretty architecture. The group split up and let us go at our own pace through it which was really nice. Eric and I walked through it enjoying ourselves for a while.

Then the heat really started to get to us. I mean it is hot and really humid. Plus between every building is this open square where the heat just pours down on you. Plus no one ever explained that the Forbidden City is so large. You walk forever and ever seeing pretty much the same thing. I mean it is super cool but when does it ever end?

Anyways, so we finally left the Forbidden City. On our long walk back to the hotel we stopped and ate our first real Chinese food. It wasn’t really that bad, just fried noodles, but I was really sick and wasn’t able to keep anything down so I wasn’t enjoying it.

When we got back to our hotel we asked the front desk if we could get our ac unit repaired. Within just a few minutes they had a repair man there to help us out. He spoke no English and by our interpretations we learned that the unit was not broken we just weren’t pushing the right buttons haha. Pretty sure the guy thought we were pretty stupid.  Yet we were thrilled to have air conditioning so we didn’t care.

We had dinner with the group. Some of the dishes were really good but others not so much. Its family style so we just kinda shared everything. I was still pretty sick so no food for me.

After dinner we all traveled together to the acrobatic show. At this point we were so tired we just weren’t really looking forward to the show. We just wanted the day to end. However, I am so glad we went. The show was amazing. It was crazy they did so many cool tricks. It was very impressive.

 These are shots of us at the subway. It is super crowded always! You are constantly touching people. Its just a little awkward.

 This was amazing he was high enough to almost touch the ceiling and he did awesome tricks!

 This guy hopped down these steps using just that one arm and then went back up them.

 There is like 12 women on 3 bikes in this picture.

All of those motorcyclist were in one of those round cages that they do tricks in at once! The pics didn't turn out though.

Even though the show was amazing, we were still grateful at the end to have finally made it to bedtime. Goodnight Beijing!