We met Mike and Gaz at our hostel on our first trip to Beijing. We got on well with them at the time and spent several nights out together and visited the great wall together. Mike and Gaz have been travelling together since February and unlike us are not tied down to any particular town, city or country. Instead they can just meander across the world in true globetrotter style.
After Beijing they went up to Mongolia for a month which both looks and sounds amazing. If I have time then I would like to go and visit there myself but I don’t think it will be possible as it takes about 4 days to get there and in February (when I am to do my travelling) Mongolia will be about as warm as a block of ice.
Mike and Gaz made their way back down into China to come with us to the A1. Due to the track not being completed they had a week going spare so decided to come and stay in the Shiz and see what it is that we get up to. They came accompanied by Jamie, a friend that they made in Mongolia, and all three lived in my front room from Tuesday to Friday – the smells in the morning were not pleasant.
Overall we had a very fun (but tiring) week. The things that put downpoints on it were that Mike lost his Camera whilst visiting the Mao Statue in our town and that I had my wallet stolen when we went out on Thursday night. But Mike had uploaded his pictures the day before and a wallet is only a wallet. The only annoying things I lost were the family photos I had inside, all the cards etc can be replaced.
Anyhow on Friday we all made our way to Beijing. The other teachers- Brock, Becky, Meredith, Hiliary, Kavitha, Zack, Wallace and Renea- were all meeting us there later on. We spent Friday night drinking and eating. Unfortunately the taxi that Dave, Zack and I were taking to the club where the others were got us lost so we never made it – this happens an alarming amount in China.
On Saturday we visited Chairman Mao. He died in 1979 and his body has been laid in state ever since. It was quite a strange experience. Due to the number of people that obviously want to see him- he’s amazingly revered in China, and seen as something like a god- you don’t actually get to stand still and look at him and are constantly moving. His body is lay in glass case and due to the amount of time he has been there he has taken on rubbery yellow type look. This, of course, leads to conspiracy theories that he is in fact a waxwork – interesting, but I’m not convinced a country of some 2 billion people would all fooled quite so easily!
Saturday night we went out to Browns Night Club – where the others made it to on Friday. It was quite a good venue but it was very strange being there as there was only a handful of Locals. Everyone else was Western and they played no eastern music at all- prodigy, nirvana, black eye peas were all preferred to Jay Chou, S.H.E and Jolin. We had an excellent night but it didn’t feel quite right.
We got back to the hotel about 6am and there is a photo of me somewhere asleep on a couch in the lobby at 6.40am so you can imagine how easy it was for us to get up the next day at 10am to get to the A1. But we all managed it!
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