Beijing part I

Left Hong Kong on what we thought would be a pretty uneventful day, only to be greeted by a gaggle of snap happy Asian teenagers at Hong Kong international airport. Apparently the guy standing next to me was a famous k-pop singer. Whilst I did my best Kanye West impression and pushed through the crowd he chickened out and headed for another door with the help of security. Looks like I almost found my 15mins of fame.

Landed in Beijing and even though I didn’t really know what to expect this wasn’t it. It’s a big bland city, the buildings have no character and seem to be built to the bare minimum. Despite that the people seem friendlier than I expected and the language barrier wasn’t so difficult. Most of the hospitality staff know some very basic English and with a bit of pointing you can get by. So far I’ve still only learnt hello, please and thank you 🙏.

After some negotiating with our crazy driver driver Mr Gao who spent more time in the emergency lane and the wrong side of the road than doing the speed limit we arrived at the hotel and caught up with Brett, Mish & Gina. It was great to finally get the crew all together so after a few local beers we headed out for dinner. For some reason they always grab the English menus when we walk into a restaurant, it’s almost as if we stick out like 4 gringos and a Mexican.

The next day it we met our new contact Mr Gao who took us to the Great Wall. The Wall was amazing and we were lucky enough to get great weather and hardly any tourists. I went full Asian and was snapping away like a teenage girl with her first selfie stick. After walking up a decent hunger and giving our calves a good workout it was dumpling time. The first place we tried was pretty average but then we stumbled on food street. I had my first scorpion skewer which had as much flavour as deep fried cardboard.

Back to the hotel for a quick scrub and out to a funky little craft beer bar which had an awesome old school vibe and jazz remixes of some classic tunes. 3 pints later we went exploring and found a little creatures brewery...wtf? A few more beers while we played connect 4 and UNO and it was time to head back to our comfy beds and enjoy our second last night of 5 star luxury for a while.

In a massive boring city we managed to have the best day of the trip so far, so with some dumb luck and a couple of hot tips Beijing can be awesome but I feel it could have just as easily gone the other way.