Saturday 14 April
The last official day of the Action Challenge tour started in pretty much exactly the same way as every other morning had - with a wake up call. . . sadly the leap from Chinese beer (3.1%) to Chinese wine (not sure of proof!)was a little noticeable!! Technically today was a free day in Beijing - but we had all signed up for a tour around Beijing and so at 9am sharp we all gaily boarded the bus for our last day together. The traffic in Beijing is something else - eight lanes of traffic - all honking and all desperately running through pelican crossings - still it meant I had a small snooze before we arrived at the Temple of Heaven - built for the emperors to worship in the Chin dynasty. We had to run through the usual gauntlet of the 'Hello hello laydee laydee' sellers and how to put it - slightly more 'mature' Chinese people having early morning yoga/exercise/hacky sack games in the park... we tried the Chinese version of hacky sack - which has feathers on some disks and were embarrassingly awful at it - so back to the sightseeing which we were much better at!!
The temple of heaven was wonderful - very similar to the Forbidden City - but we had a lot do do so it was 'chop chop' let's move along. . . and into a tea shop - another selling opportunity - but really interesting - we learnt how to hold our tea cups - so has not to appear wanton - and how to drink tea to look 'sexy'... I think I might need several gallons a day to even begin to have this effect - but a girl can dream! We were then taken through the Hutong - an old area of narrow streets - only possible by Rickshaw. Pity the poor man that had to pull Lisa and myself - on a bike with no gears and no motor - I hope he had his ginseng for breakfast - he certainly didn't seem as smiley as everyone else's rickshaw driver!! The Hutong are fab - really crazy interesting place - the only downside being that the houses don't have bathrooms so all the locals use the public toilets - meaning that you need nostrils of steel as you sail past in your rickshaw!
We spent the first art of the afternoon at the Summer Palace - not my favourite part of Beijing as it was full of people - or was it just that I knew our next stop off point was the Yashow Market (aka Knock Off market). Two hours of the most intense shopping ever. If you want to buy something in Beijing - they sell it here - all total knock off - between us we left with Ugg boots, mulberry handbags, rolex watches, Paul Smith t-shirts, Abercrombie t-shirts, angry birds t-shirts, Chairman Mao t-shirts, lego, silk scarves, quicksilver t-shirts, marc jacobs bags, converse bags, CK boxers and Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts and we certainly didn't even get close to spending £100 between us!! Lisa was a legend at bartering - she made on woman cry - and there were areas of the market we were scared to re-visit as we had bartered a little too hard!
All too soon the day was over - and the rest of our group headed off to the airport leaving Lisa and myself feeling very forlorn.. who would count us ? decide what we would eat and drink? arrange our wake up call for goodness sake? How would we get around Beijing without our bus taking us from door to door - scary moments!!!
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