Off to Xi'an we go, ho! (Marcus)

Well our time in Beijing is rapidly coming to an end. We're both sitting in the hostel's computer room - sweating away, the meagre air from the fan in here not really strong enough to actually cool us. We checked out at 6pm and are biding time as the sleeper train does not depart until 9:30pm. We actually extended our room check out time by half a day(from midday to 6pm) so we didn't have to while away the afternoon elsewhere - it's just too hot to NOT have a cool air-conditioned room to retire to.

It's been a very busy week and we have seen a lot of very interesting things. It has been fun being here long enough that we could move about at our leisure and see all the things we wanted to see. As mentioned previously, there was only so much of the same style of attraction we could see(ie how many churches/castles are you going to visit in the same Europe trip?) so by this half of the week we've really just plodded around and scaled it back somewhat.

We have been all over however. On thursday(our 'rest' day) we started by visiting Beijing's 798 Art District - Courtney will tell you all about that. In the afternoon I thought I would check out one of Beijing's two aquarium's called the Blue Zoo. I don't know what it is about Aquarium's but I have always loved visiting them. I guess my love of fish since early childhood has always drawn me to them. So seeing there was supposedly two very large ones in Beijing I opted for the new one, Blue Zoo with Asia's longest underwater tunnel.

It cost 70rmb to get in, making it the most expensive single attraction short of our Great Wall tour. It really was only worth 25rmb; if that. The place was very average I decided. There really wasn't that many displays and of those visible they were of a very poor quality. The design of them was subpar and many of them looked dirty. In some cases, the fish in them actually looked tired or unwell. There was a medium sized tank full of sharks where they had seriously bugger all room to swim around - just like the large sea turtles in the one next door to it. Meh. So I headed on to the aquarium tunnel, by this point regretting having even come.

The tunnel was likewise unimpressive - nothing I hadn't seen before in other aquariums. In truth, I don't know what I expected - but at least I got to sate my own curiosity for wanting to see it, that was the main thing. I had kind of hoped that being new, it would be some cutting edge super awesome technologically advanced chinese aquarium, but no, it most definitely was not. It was if anything a very Chinese aquarium designed for the very easily amused Chinese tourists.

Of course the serenity of the underwater tunnel was destroyed by the blaring of the Chinese tour leaders megaphone - that's right, every single attraction anywhere has at least one tour group. They are immediately distinguishable by the megaphone holding, flag wielding person at the front - and if that's not enough, 20-30 people all wearing the same coloured cap might just tip you off.

I guess the actual highlight of the underwater tunnel wasnt the fish or the length or anything like that, but the fact that in true Chinese tradition - fish in water was simply not enough - it demanded more! More equalled two women swimming around inside the tank dressed as Mermaids - colour me surprised! A lake is not a place of enjoyment for the Chinese unless it is filled with paddle boats.....water? paddle boats? now we're talkin! The same goes for an underwater tunnel, it has to have at least ONE gimick or it's totally not worth the price of admission. Seeing these women did amuse me so it wasn't all bad.

Friday we were going to head to the Summer Palace but decided against it, instead we mostly hung around the local area. We went for a walk down by HouHai lake and in the evening, because Courtney really wanted to, tried to go and see the Bird's Nest and Water Cube - ie the 2008 Beijing Olympics new stadium and aquatics centre. Well what a failure that turned out to be. In truest Marcus and Courtney fashion we got off at what was seemingly the closest operational subway station - which of course turned out to be bloody MILES from the venues. So we walked and walked, Courtney was not feeling well and it was damned hot.

After a few blocks we finally spotted them and started heading to them but most of the area was closed off, no signage, and no idea which road actually would lead past it. Beijing is a huge city but it is not compact like say Shanghai. It's decievingly massive and takes a very long time to get around. We have had issues with map scale previous. When we went to see an antiques market last sunday, what looked to only be a few average sized blocks on the map ended up being an absolute to the moon and back distance. Hot and buggered we had to give up and get a cab to it and when we saw how much further it actually was, man what good value that cab was.

The Olympic venue was no different, however there were no taxi's in this area. There were lots of Chinese milling around doing god knows what, but no obvious way to get to the Olympic venues which after walking for a very long time were still a long way away. It was getting towards dusk and with the heat still right up there and Courtney feeling sick, we didn't have much left in us. We did find a paddock full of Chinese army equipment under camoflage though - I got a photo of this. You could barely tell they were there - obviously radar trucks and the like(prolly missile batteries!) - but seeing them was a real buzz. Two guards snapped crisp at attention to what was seemingly just a paddock with some shrubs in it....but no!

So we didn't see the venues other than the tip of the Bird's Nest - oh well, it's on TV enough.

And last but not least, to cap off this lengthy post(apologies!) we spent our day today doing nothing more than visiting a park opposite the Forbidden City. We were waiting for the weather and visibility to clear up as this place looks fantastic. It was only a lowly 2rmb to enter and in the middle was a large hill with 5 different pagodas. The hill was man-made, made from the dirt removed by making the moat of the Forbidden City oh so long ago. The views this hill offers of Beijing however are incredible, in particular the view looking over the Forbidden City itself.

Here you could see just how big he Emperor's Palace city actually was, and the roof's on display I daresay are even more impressive from a distance than actually walking amongst them with the tourist droves. From this vantage you can also see just how big and sprawling Beijing actually is.

All in all the park - which featured some lovely gardens, capped off what was a very interesting, very enjoyable week in China's capital. It's now off to Xi'an, the ancient capital. Where Beijing's history was really in the last 4-500 years, Xi'an goes right back to the very first dynasties...thousands of years ago. It should be very different to Beijing and we're looking forward to just getting there. Did i mention the hotel we're staying in has a pool? Hell yeah!

Catch!