Ulf, Laura and myself planned to get hot-pot for brunch, aimlessly strolling around didn’t actually lead us to a hot pot place but at least a local place. I had some sort of noodle soup which tasted sweet and payed 1 € for that, the others didn’t have that much luck with their orders though. I guess my karma helps me out now and then.

We bumped into a Dragonfly parlor and decided that we would treat ourselves a massage again. This time I actually got the chinese one when ordering instead of the japanese. They were both nice but I think that the japanese one was the winner of the two. A couple of hours crisp winter walking is just a start for me and Ulf but Laura decided she would join Alex and Helen for a visit to a market.

We felt that we should pay our respect to mammon as well and headed off to a t-shirt store that Rhys and Alex had visited and recommended. We bought some quality t-shirts there, took some photos, bought a few more t-shirts in another store and generally explored the area.

After wandering around for some time, partially searching for a park we ended up in old Beijing (bringing the lonely planet would be cheating so we had no maps) which gave a few real nice photos and interesting buildings. It seemed that quite a lot was being torn down for new skyscrapers though.
The Beijing weather gradually changed towards our first impressions which in addition to sunset gave a not only pleasant drop in the temperature. We decided that we had enough photos and took a cab back to our quarters. We remembered that we had a lovely hot-pot the first day close by and payed Xaibu Xaibu another visit. Damn sweet and cheap.

Almost back home we did some fitting at Yashow (my two shirts and Ulf’s suits+shirts), they had kind of screwed up Ulf’s shirts so that had to be redone until tomorrow. My karma ensured that I was done and dusted though. We had planned to eat Beijing Duck before we left and since this would be my last night it was due time.

Laura had picked the place. When entering the door the entire buzzing crowd got quiet and turned their eyes on the foreigners. After a second they resumed their meals and what looked like rather heavy drinking. We were directed to a somewhat secluded part of the restaurant where it was more quiet (still getting looks from the people there though). Just as we were seated someone (a manager?) explained that we should not sit here, instead we got a VIP room with a closed door and a waiter guarding the entrance. Interesting.

We ordered and were told that it would take approximately 40 minutes to roast the duck. Fair enough, we ordered some starters and upon my suggestion we would try out some “Wild Jujubu juice” in addition to beer and a bottle of wine. In came a carton of orange juice, another wine than we ordered and a beer. The duck arrived 5 minutes later to our surprise (not sure I want to know how the managed that). They made a show of cutting up the duck but since they couldn’t get everyone inside the VIP room they cut the duck on the outside and had our door open so we could see. Which meant that I saw a whole table looking me in my eyes.

The duck tasted ok, I guess, I really can’t tell except that it was plenty of fat on the duck. We then got in plates with meat and what seemed to be liver or heart on a plate. Laura explained that she was not interested in that so me and Ulf took one half each. It was quite hard to eat with chopsticks and the heart/liver was surrounded by a rather hard/crunchy part. Ulf suggested we perhaps should try that too which I of course agreed to, didn’t taste that good though. Now what was edible/soft was gone. That’s when Ulf said “I see an eye”. So the crunchy/hard part was the skull bone of the duck. For the soft parts inside well, I guess it tasted better than expected.

Plenty of wine, dumplings and duck later we were done and the bill ended up at 21 € for all of us, sweet. It was time to get ready for tonight when we was to check out Helen’s favorite place, Vics. But not after a cocktail or two at Alfa’s who specialized in 80’s music. Well, I guess good company evens out bad music, right?

Vics was supposed to have two dance floors we were promised by Helen, one R&B/HipHop which was their main concept and another Techno floor which me and Ulf thought we might escape to when we couldn’t stand the hip-hop. There was no Techno-floor. Well, it was better hip-hop than usual and the DJs were quite skilled although the seemed to mess up everything once now and then. I mean having silence gaps between songs is kind of lame when clubbing?

The atmosphere and the people at the club was another interesting subject. Being sober (almost) I saw that a lot of people were drunk as hell, some people I thought only existed in hip-hop movies (and I’m not talking about the girls, but rather humorous bling-bling guys) and of course it was a metal detector at the entrance. All in all it was quite fun though and we didn’t get home until past 03.

Now having read in the Lonely Planet Tibet I had an idea of what would be cool places to visit in Tibet, it was time to see what the travel agent had answered about permits and give her more detailed information about my itinerary. The mail had bounced, not so good. I instead called her and she texted me her mail, apparently there was typo in the mail from Mathias. I sent her a new mail with two example itineraries stolen from tibet-travels.com (thanks for the tip Lotta). It seems like I could have prepared this quite some time ago to be on the safe side, but where would the challenge and uncertainty be then?

We had brunch at Hatsume, a japanese restaurant that Alex had recommended for their excellent maki rolls. It was yet another nice japanese restaurant and we tried some of the different rolls. They were really nice, not necessary to the quality of the ingredients but rather the compositions. In addition one just have to try a roll named ninja if able.

Laura then wanted to visit, *drumroll* a market *cymbal* near the Beijing Zoo, Ulf and I figured they might have some parks nearby so we joined her. We thought of the Zoo but I’m kind of against the idea of caging animals in the first place and after reading that the Beijing Zoo was worse than most (except for pandas who got a decent treatment) we ditched that idea. Instead a short market-visit and some old school lounging in a park with the elders and enjoying the Beijing sun. This was another beautiful day and I think that we might been a bit too harsh on previous judgements regarding Beijing.

It seemed that my travel agent had managed to do some bookings for me now, I made some minor changes (who needs a soft sleeper for a 48 hours trip when there is a cheaper hard one?) and will get news tomorrow if she manages to book me the train ticket. If so, I leave for Lhasa via the newly built railway above the permafrost on saturday night.

We had a snack at a fast food chain previously neglected by me, KFC. I got myself a mexican twister and an ice cream, this was about 1.5 € and didn’t taste that bad at all. Ulf got some nuggets though which I could tell from the taste was pure unhealthiness and probably never originated from a living animal, least not chicken.

The last market for the day was a tour back to the black market, Ulf and I needed new bags for our cameras now when we had our sexy 18-200 OS lenses. Said and done, at least that’s what we thought. The driver dropped us at another market, Laura stayed while Ulf and I scouted for the familiar foul stench and entryway to the black market. We found it quite quick and managed to snag two bags about 3 € each, awesome.

Back at the hostel, it was time for some blogging before dinner which we had at Pink Loft. It’s a shame to eat somewhere twice but it was really nice and rather cheap so we figured it would be ok. The night was finished by cozily watching a film. Uffe having the laptop on his belly, Laura and me on each side. Not exactly my projector, surround system and lovely sofa but at least I’m still on vacation in China.

Back to Beijing, the city of pollution. The flight from Shanghai went all well but it was still quite late so we slept like babies back at Poachers Inn. When waking up we were informed that the previously included breakfast was not part of the 2008 prices. Which wasn’t much of a loss to be honest. We instead shopped at the local supermarket and realized that the sky was blue. Still the air had the Beijing aroma of gunpowder but it looked much better than earlier days.

We decided to do some sightseeing now when we had such a good weather. I had tried to google some information about cleaning my sensor but the best information I had was quite vague and two years old. So when we picked up some luggage that we had left at Alex fathers apartment, I asked Florence and a girl named Sara if they knew any canon locations. Some chinese googling and two phone calls later I had an address in chinese writing and a number. Sweet.

We first checked out the forbidden city which was big, really big. I guess one could say that we rushed through since we only spent two hours there though. What stood out from other similar places is that these are so young. The emperors had phono records and the dates on signs went in on the 20th century.
After visiting the Forbidden Palace we went to see Tiananmen Square as well. This is the worlds biggest public square and also gives a good position to take pictures towards the Heavenly Gate of Peace where Mao’s famous picture hangs.

We also saw the Monument to People’s Heroes which, not surprisingly, depicts patriotic characters in Chinese history. Again the feeling that this was really recent history came to my mind, and the rather tight security also reminded of the past.

While strolling around we were approached by a chinese girl in our age who was eager to train her english. She was actually traveling by her own and lived in the north-eastern parts close to Russia. She kept a good stream of compliments between inquiring sentences so we wondered if there was some hidden agenda but it seemed she was just a very talkative and friendly girl. After some chatting/listening we decided to jump in a cab to visit the canon quick service centre though and said a quick good-bye to the girl.

Languages are interesting, it was easier to explain that I wanted to clean my cmos sensor than saying Alex address in a way that Taxi drivers understand. 10 € and half an hour later my camera was as good as new, lovely. Celebration at some cheap chinese food chain where we enjoyed different dumplings and not as delicious sausages and some other meat.

This was enough work for one day but why not go to Yashow and fix a pair of jeans that needed customization and see how my suits fit? Said and done, I was perhaps a little picky but in the end it looked just fine. So I ordered two more shirts, and realizing that I would never fit this in the bags I brought with me I bought a cabin luggage as well. I paid 7 € for the the cabin luggage after some haggling and was later complimented by another peddler for my good deal (which may or might not be a truth ;))

When arriving home I saw that the jeans was magically too long anyway so I had to get back again. Finally happy with all purchases me and Ulf decided to split some noodles and a few meat-on-a-sticks for deserts. A long productive day came to an end but tomorrow I need to look into the Tibet traveling a bit more.