Beijing

It's hard to believe that I initially landed in Beijing almost a month ago. I flew in from Dubai on 1 June on China Southern Air, which I thought was about the worst airlines I had ever flown on - little did I know that by the end of my trip I'd be looking back on that first flight with them as a golden age, but that's another story for another time, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. Beijing is an odd city, and it's just about the most welcoming huge city I've ever visited, if that makes any sense.. There are some cities, mainly places like Mumbai or Cairo, which are so daunting that it is almost hard to leave the airport, at least on your first time there. Beijing is huge, but laid out in a very rational fashion, which also, sadly, means that a lot of the history has been bulldozed - a lot of the chaos of a big city is, by definition, history. There are taxis everywhere and, unlike the Middle East where every trip is an adventure in negotiating, all the cabs automatically turn on the meter and will print you off a receipt (I'm sure this is a direct result of the Olympics coming to China). I stayed in the Beijing Friendship Hotel, which is right across the street from a very modern department store and which is surrounded by a ton of restaurants and shops. If you were walking along the street you could easily just think that you were in any large American city, and that was especially jarring coming in directly from the Middle East. The Chinese seem to have adapted much more easily and readily to the west than you ever see in the Middle East. I saw no one wearing any thing remotely "traditional" and most of the women favored very short skirts. There are a lot of great places to eat, some of which are very expensive - mainly the first place that I visited with my friend Craig, a hotpot place that was our first meal in Beijing - but others are which are very reasonable. I'm including an early picture - one of a street scene walking back from a restaurant. I'll include a lot more pictures later on, especially from the time I spent outside of Beijing, but this will get me started.