Beijing - First Full Day

Well what a place Beijing is, 10.5 Million people as at 2000, so more likely 15 million today.

An early start to the  day, with “american” breakfast then off via the subway to Tianamen Square and Tomb of Mousey Tong or “Meow” to his friends.

Apparently it is or was some anniversary of the Tianamen Sq uprising, hence security seemed extra tight. Passport and Visa checks at all points of entry to the Sq. Xray and pat down was well. Are these guys nervous??. In fact security is tight everywhere as every time you enter a railway station anything you are carrying must go through Xray. I can now say with confidence that nothing is living in my bag as it has been irradiated so may times now it will glow in the dark. As a tourist attraction, Tianamen Sq is a bit of a fizzer (see Pic). Must be worse for Mao, he has to overlook it every day. Time to move on.

My next adventure proved far more productive, I have been trying to upgrade the firmware in my new camera (Sony A7) since I bought and all attempts so far have proved fruitless. Well today I managed to track down a Sony Service centre in the Burbs of Beijing and they (for a small fee) managed to upgrade the camera, so I am happier now.

After putting that issue to bed, I decided to head off to the Beijing Zoo. Here I discovered that all things called Bear, be it Polar, Panda, Brown or Koala like to take it easy, they are the ultimate efficiency machines, why move when you don’t have to, sleeping is far more attractive, (See pics), I also saw some tigers and a hedgehog and some weird fluffy thing called a southern pigeon.  There is also another pic in there of some huge bird, called a bustard, I had to include it. That just about finished the day. I then headed back to the hostel again on the Underground.

The underground in Beijing is worth some discussion on its own, It is massive and cheap and easy (see qualification) to use. It would have to be the best city public transport system I have seen anywhere. It costs 2 Yuan (about 40c) for any one way trip anywhere in the system, which covers a huge area, possibly the size of Melbourne and suburbs. Trains seem to be every 2 mins in either direction on the  multitude of intersecting lines that cover the city. The one slight downside is that when you need to change lines at an intersecting station, you need to walk about 500m up and down steps to get to the other line. Sometimes there are escalators, but still many steps remain, even to enter or exit any station. I must have stepped the 39 steps about 39 times today in getting around today. So at the end of the day when getting back to the hostel I had a Chinese Pedicure and Foot massage for about an hour. My first foot massage and I can recommend it. Tired old feet had dissappeared.

Tomorrow I had planned a trip to the wall, but I think I will explore the city more on my own using the metro and the steps. And I need to pick up my Mongolian Train ticket from somewhere.

Currently having a very very cheesy “meat Lovers” pizza and a beer in the Hostel Café.