Lee and Clare, The road home

Beijing

29^th October 2003

Not too much to report today apart from a bit of sickness. Boo hoo. Lee's over his tummy troubles now, lucky for him. I started getting a cold and then a major sinus headache, and today I have the opposite digestion problem to that I had after all the meat and flour of Mongolia. Felt pretty sick all day today, but McDonalds toilets have been a blessing as there are lots of them around and there are only squatters in our hostel.

In fact we hate our hostel but can't be bothered moving, so have to put up with 3 more nights there. Main problem is that it's 4 floors underground, hence no windows, natural light or fresh air (great when you have a headache), I have yet to find hot water in the girls showers, After 3 showerless days I scared some Chinese men by showering in the men's. Oh and then there's the squatters, not so fun with a dodgy stomach.

Went to the Forbidden City yesterday, where 24 emperors lived during the Ming and Qing Dynasties for 500 years from the 1400s to 1900s when the People's Republic of China was formed. It has 9999 rooms (9 was a lucky number and Lee has a good memory for numbers). It's all made of wood so it's been burnt down a few times and rebuilt to the original architecture so it's still the same as original.

We are already sick of the hawkers here. Oh my god, they drive you mental always saying "hello" "lady!" "You want Chairman Mao book?" "Where you from?" "DVD!" etc etc etc etc etc etc etc..... Funny at first but now we're bordering on the very impolite.

When we went to Tiannamen Square last night I don't know how many people tried to sell us a kite! But it was cool to see all the kites flying there.

We mentioned before how we'd gone back to autumn. Actually, even better! We're back in late summer. Yesterday we were walking around in our T-shirts! Is chilly in the wind though. On our first day when we were walking from the station with our packs trying to find our hotel it was SOO windy! Quity funny. Almost got blown into a fountain - literally! That's why it didn't look polluted here on our first day, it's pretty smoggy now, but still not a bit of rubbish, even a cigarette butt on the ground. The cars are all good, no old clangers spouting crap in the air. I guess the pollution must just come from having a population of 14m (another number that Lee remembered!)

Went to a market last night which reminded us a bit of Thailand except it was super clean and in Thailand the people don't all yell at you when you walk past. "Sir! Snake!" (a snake on a kebab stick), "Sir! Sea Horse!" "Scorpion!" (all on kebab sticks). Also saw baby chickens, just born, 5 skewered to a kebab. yum yum.

If feeling well enough tomorrow we're going to go to the summer palace.