Trip Notes for June 22
Monday, June 22: Beijing, China
9:00 We meet in the lobby and set out for the Forbidden City and Tian’anmen Square. I’ve been to both before but this time it’s a better experience with Jason, our Chinese speaking guide.
1:00 Beck, Mark and I set out for Silk Street. We take a city bus and two subway lines. Beijing is a very easy city to navigate, especially with a lot of the transit signage in English and several public transit and translation apps on my iPhone.
18:45 I’ve been able to find socks, underwear and two quick-dry t-shirts in my size – which is no small feat in China. I celebrate with a Grande Americano at Starbucks. The price is 25 Yuen or CA$4.86.
22:45 It’s times like this that I think I’m in possibly the most annoying place on earth. The lobby of my hotel normally has about 10 very loud birds in cages, but they’ve been put away for the night. The only thing still chirping are two cicadas housed in tiny little cages above the front desk. They’re driving me crazy. The reason I’m in the lobby is because the wifi is not working in my room. It works in the lobby but neither of two VPN services that I have access to are actually working, hence I cannot access my blog, WordPress (the site that hosts my blog), Smugmug (the site where I post and archive my photos), Facebook or any site a Westernere might want to use. I can’t even look up the chart of the North Anerica Cup as even standardbredcanada.ca is blocked in China! I can access Baidu and a live auction site though.
23:50. I should be in bed but instead I’m on an auction site and about to bid on a bag of Acme bird and cicada poison.
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