Day 1: Beijing

The trip began easily. The flight was smooth, customs and immigration were a walk in the park, and there was a taxi waiting for us (actually more like 500 taxis) to take us to our hotel.

The next morning we ventured into central Beijing. It. is. awesome. Amazingly eccentric and pure madness.

Indicators are optional

Unwittingly ended up in the "queue" for Mao's mausoleum, where the indefatigable (even in death) Mao is supposedly on display. I won't say it's not Mao... but let's face it, the man looked like a wax effigy when he was alive anyway, so what the hell. It was the singularly most macabre thing I've ever seen. Even more macabre was the slew of Chinese fans, taking plastic flowers into the Mao altar before the main event. He is still a god here. But more on that later...

You can't take anything with you to see Mao - god help you if you even tried. One unfortunate character thought he'd sneak in his camera in his coat pocket and one of the guards went mental on his arse, screaming at him in Chinese. Guess evening primrose oil isn't available in China...

For the record though, most of the omnipresent guards are docile as lambs and look bored as hell most of the time. Matt befriended a few of them in Tiananmen Square, using kanji to forge a temporary friendship.

Next stop was The Forbidden City (aka Palace Museum), also amazing. It's a neverending maze of recesses and palaces and gardens and alleys.

Girl at the Forbidden City

I keep forgetting I'm not in Japan, so when we get hassled by the endless stream of hawkers, the obligatory "Bu yao" (Chinese trans: "no I really don't want what you're offering, so bugger off)" keeps coming out as "Bu yao desu yo". (hybrid Chinese/Japanese trans: "no I really don't want what you're offering, so bugger off, ya heard me!") But we learnt early on that Japanese was perhaps not the best language to use. When Matt went in to a local shack to buy some water, he struck up a conversation (or as much of one as you can manage when neither person speaks the same language) and he told the guy he was from Australia but that he lived in Japan. The old guy wrote on some paper "Australia" (in Kanji) and "Japan" (in Kanji). He put a big tick next to Australia, then scrawled a bigger cross through Japan, and shot the paper with his fingers. So, ahem, Japanese was out...

Kinki's Daily Dose... Traffic

There are no rules. It's all on. At any given moment, a flock of bikes are trying to cross in front of a rickshaw which is trying to cross in front of a taxi, which is driving on the kerb trying to overtake the bus which is butt-humping the rickshaw driver who is hassling a tourist trying to catch the taxi. It's chaos. Lanes are optional. Indicators, night lights and seat belts not required. How people don't die every other second of the day I have no idea. The taxi-drivers are veritable masters of the tight squeeze.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Book your first night in Beijing on the internet before you leave. You get super deals. We stayed at the Grand View Garden for the first 4 nights, usually 580 yuan a night. Through China Discounts we got it for 380 yuan.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 2: "Beijing, the Continuing Story..."

Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square Photo Gallery