Trip day 5
Day 4 in Beijing
I have booked my Great Wall trip! The hostel was very helpful and found a driver for me instead of having to tie myself to a tour. This means I can start and finish whenever I want to and I get to in a comfortable air conditioned car.
Did not do anything big today. I went to the Wangfujing shopping district and had a wander around. Went to the street with all the weird food.
Ate scorpion (just tasted like crunchy oil), bugs (same again) and some mystery meat on a stick (probably pork). I was going to get a starfish to munch on on the way out but forgot!
After wandering around for a few hours (shopping malls are the same everywhere) I went back to the hostel for my midday aircon break.
Then I headed out in the afternoon and visited the Lama Temple ...biggest Buddhist temple in China apparently. Lovely peaceful place with a very beautiful giant Buddha statue at the end. I burned incense tried not to interrupt the prayers of actual Buddhists who came to worship.
Did not finish in time to look at the Confucian temple so instead wandered around the hutongs trying to find something interesting. Didn't really. My local ones were better. #neighbourhoodpride
For dinner I went to this little place that was effectively a bunch of small street food vendors together in a fixed location. You choose the things you want, get a receipt then go hand it to that person to make it for you. I got a couple of things I didn't think I ordered but everything was awesome.
Something a little odd happened today. I received a gift from one of the Chinese guys in the hostel. Quiet guy, never said much because his English wasn't very good. But apparently I was the first westerner he'd ever spoken to and he was quite appreciative that I'd been so friendly. So he bought me a stuffed animal to say thank you. He then took a couple of selfies with me and we had a brief conversation later via a translation app. Nice guy but a weird thing.
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