It took us all day and then some to get from Boracay to Beijing but we were up early and out to see the sights. At Tiananmen Square there were huge numbers of people, most Chinese on tours. We spent several hours touring the Forbidden City but saw only part of it. The Forbidden City is huge, about twenty city blocks long and several wide, enclosed by a wall and surrounded by a moat. There are 75 palaces within the city all well preserved. Most of the Forbidden City was built in the 1400-1500s and only opened to anyone beyond Chinese royalty in 1941. A most spectacular place. We left there and went on to the Temple of Heaven across town, again really unique place.
We meet up with the Lees in the late afternoon as they arrived from Manila and the last of the wedding festivities. Everyone tired from travel and all of the time changes so we had an American dinner and made a short foray into a night market here to check out the souvenirs. The street vendors here are very aggressive and it takes some doing to get by then. All things bought in the market need to be haggled for with ridiculous trading situations. The vendor quotes a price by showing you a number on a calculator. The number is about 10 times higher than he will accept. You are then expected to enter a number in his calculator as to what you’d offer. These exchanges go on until a price is agreed on. All in all not enjoyable!
There is some tension in the city with the situation in T*b*t. The censorship is heavy handed. On the TV when news reports are given about the situation there the TV goes blank for portions of the broadcast that are not favorable. Internet access is also censored, no one can get to certain stories on web sites and some websites like youtube are not accessible at all. While we can still post to the blog we cannot view our (or any other) blog. It doesn't appear that we can continue to add photos to the blog also. I’d like to make some other comments but won’t right now.
Off to the Great Wall today!
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The Fitzpatrick's arrived in Narita airport outside of Tokyo after about 6 hours but had to endure 2 more hours in line waiting to get through immigration. While there were many agents to process those arriving, they were equally split between Japanese citizens and foreigners. Very few nationals arriving so they were processed quickly. However, those agents weren't empowered to process non-nationals - so our incredibly long line waited forever! The agents were pleasant and efficient, just annoying to watch the other agents sitting with literally nothing to do.
Getting from the airport to Tokyo was interesting - Narita Express train was reserved seating, quick anf efficient. Once at Tokyo station things got interesting -- we took two cabs because of all the luggage. Neither cab driver had ever heard of the hotel. And, apparently, the addresses in Tokyo are unusable even by natives. As best we can tell from the explanations we got, the three numbers that make up the address are Neighborhood, Area, and Building. But Building numbers are assigned in the order that the building is built, not their position on the street. The cabs all have GPS, but the cabbies aren't trained in their use. Anyway, Karen noticed a sign for our hotel and we somehow got the cabbie to understand. Kevin and Ryan were not so lucky and pent another half-hour touring the neighborhood.
Today, March 28, was spent walking around - more later.
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