Time: 7:02 PM
Date: June 29th
Ni hao, China!
Ok, not really. Since my last post, I have already arrived and departed from China. So obviously, I survived!! If you've been keeping up with the blog, you'll know that I've been feeling faint all the time and I was scared that I would faint in China or something worse, but everything went fine! China was AMAZING!!!!!! I spent seven days there and every day was crazy for their own individual reasons. Since, there will be a lot to talk about, I'll split it into 2-3 posts, just so you guys won't get bogged down with 53924235 paragraphs to read.
Day 1
We left to go to the airport at the crack of my butt. I think it was around 4 or 5. I just know it was REALLY early and for some reason, the tour company always goes to the airport 2 hours before the flight. Drain. On the way there, I pretty much knocked out the whole way. When we got there, It was around evening and the first thing we did was drive to dinner. This was my first time seeing Beijing. It was freaking amazing! Unlike Vietnam, China had a bunch of people driving cars and a LOT of nice, big buildings. Even bigger than the ones in Thailand. They were obviously very rich and developed, being a superpower nation and all. It was like driving around Atlanta or New York City... except with Chinese people.
After dinner, we attended an acrobats show. Apparently, this is one of the more popular shows that they have in China. The acrobats show was mindblowing. They had people doing things that I didn't even think was possible. People were rolling around in tiny hoops, lifting people up on their chins, etc... And then the ending had this giant sphere of doom come out and a guy drove his motorcycle in. That wasn't all. One by one, people went into the sphere until about six of them were driving around without hitting eachother. When I first went into the theatre, I was starting to get a little faint and I knew what would happen next. It was exactly how I felt the first time at the Ladyboy show in Thailand. I didn't freak out this time and thought rationally instead of alarming everyone, so I went into the bathroom for a bit and just relaxed in a stall until I calmed down and felt better, which apparently worked. I felt fine the rest of the day. After that, we went to our hotel room.
Day 2
I had no idea what the schedule was like for this trip because no one told me, so, wherever we went was a surprise to me. You can imagine the look on my face when I realized the first place we would go to was the Great Wall. I mean, I knew we would go there at some point, but I didn't realize it would be so soon! I'm 100% sure everyone knows what the Great Wall is, so I won't go into details besides saying it's one of the most famous landmarks on Earth. The section we went to was located near Beijing. I really didn't know what to expect. I mean besides it being a great wall. From pictures and what I imagined, I figured it was a straight wall that people would walk on top of. Well, I didn't think that it would just be 1,000 stair steps. Literally. The steps were so steep and there were so many steps that I felt like I was being tortured. It was hilarious though because there were hundreds of people everywhere on this narrow path on the wall and people were sweating, panting, sitting down, about to pass out, etc. It was quite the work out. I climbed to one of the little watchtowers or whatever and went back down. It was definitely exhausting, but hey, now I can say I climbed the Great Wall!
Now, Asian tours are weird... Well, I don't exactly know if they do this on other tours, but I'll just limit it to the asian ones for now, but apparently, they like to stop at the randomest places and shop, but it's not just shopping. First, we'll go to to some place and they'll show us a little exhibit or museum. Then, they'll take us into a room and do a little lecture or something before they bring out their goods and try selling them. After the Great Wall, we went to a jade place since jade is such a big thing in China. I believe it was the Jade Carving Center. They talked a lot about jade, how it's made, blah blah blah. I didn't really pay attention because I don't understand people who speak Vietnamese with an accent. At the end, we went to the shop area and I ended up with a nice black bracelet that was cheap!
Next, we went to the Ming Dynasty Tombs which contains the tombs of 13 emperors. The only tomb to have been excavated was the one we visited, The Dingling Tomb. It was really interesting to see this aspect of ancient China. The buildings were all intact and so was the tomb. We had to go underground to see it, but it was breathtaking. Although some of the things were replicas, it was so cool to see how it was set up and how grand it was. It's definitely something worth visiting if you are touring Beijing.
Next, we visited the Summer Palace, which consists of several palaces and gardens. This place was stunningly beautiful. It was originally built sometimes in the 1700s, and was renovated and rebuilt throughout the years. It was also the summer resort of some of Empress. It was so pretty and fun to see all of the different gardens and architecture and buildings. Definitely another important to place to visit if you're in Beijing. There's also this huge lake beside it that covers most of the area. That was pretty much all for the first full day in China.
So, I already started writing day 3 and I realized that this post would be super, super, super long if I wrote it all down, so, I'll save it for the next post!
xxxjohnny.
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