Off with not quite a roar

In which place would you choose to wait if your plane was delayed for 20 hours? The boarding gate lounge or the Koru Club? Normally, commoners like us would be in the boarding lounge, but when the runway lights failed at Auckland Airport, stopping all flights out, this time we had single-pass Koru Club tickets, so we were able to while away our frustrations with a continuous buffet, unlimited drinks and semi-comfortable cushions to get a few hours kip on the floor. When the lights finally came on again, the crew had to be allowed their rest time, so we got away 20 hours later than expected, totally wasted but well fed and watered.

Beijing

The delay has meant less time in Beijing, but all is well. The air smells just like Christchurch in winter used to, that thick, smog smell laced with fumes and cold. Actually it smells worse, and it gets into everything. Wandering around the Forbidden City (Palace Museum now) was cold but amazing. The scale of it is hard to imagine - you keep going further in through one "gate" after another, each of incredible size and intricate decorative design. Around the sides of the main central thoroughfares are dozens of smaller temples, rooms and courtyards, with names like The Palace of Complete Happiness, The Gate of Mental Cultivation and the Pavilion of Scenery and Luckiness. You'd need days to really do it justice, but you'd be very cold and footsore.

Grant tries to absorb longevity from a tortoise

Deciding to rekindle the adventurous spirit we enjoyed on our first OE, we got into a tiny scrape by accepting a rickshaw ride through the hutong (narrow streets) to get from A to B. Unfortunately the driver pulled a fast one and tried to make us pay much more than what we'd verbally agreed. We appealed to a nearby security guard for help but he pretended not to understand and left us to deal with the increasingly agitated rickshaw driver. We just walked away in the end amid ranting and raving, but it shook us up a little. It is basically a safe place but there are touts everywhere and it's tiring even after a few hours of being out and about.

Seahorse kebabs anyone?

Last night we went to the Night Market and decided to go for ostrich kebab rather than sea-horse or snake! No sooner had we chucked the fatty remains in the bin than a beggar dived right in and rescued it. On the whole Beijing is very rubbish-free (huge armies of cleaners are everywhere sweeping up) but the smog makes up for that.


That Wall

Today (Tuesday) we accepted an offer from an unofficial tour guide to take us to the Great Wall, the Summer Palace and the Birdsnest (aka the Olympic Stadium). We forget that the Great Wall is also a huge magnet for Chinese tourists, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that the place we went was absolutely seething with people. Appararently it is MUCH worse in summer, and you take 3 times as long descending the section of the wall than you do going up, as they have to let people through in ones and twos to get down through the throng. After pinching ourselves to remind us that we were actually on one of the most monumental landmarks in the world, we enjoyed our time there and accepted the crowd for what it was - a lot of people all doing what we were doing!

Unfortunately, cheap things usually have a catch, so we had to put up with our guide Jack taking us to a silk factory, a pearl factory, a tea factory and a jade factory. Each time they go through a spiel about how it is done (actually very interesting) and then the hard sell starts. We managed to escape without pearls or silk, but succumbed to tea and jade. The smog is so disgusting here that the Birdnest was almost invisible from less than 1km away. Time to go to Germany ...

The last word at the Wall

(this post was added by Gabe due to interesting Chinese internet regulations :D)