Three days in Beijing without sightseeing

Beijing, China is packed with ancient, fascinating, and important sites. Masayo and I finally got here on Day 87 of our China trip, and we managed to see none of these things.

It wasn’t our plan to give old Peking such short shrift, but we had other things to take care of: Masayo was flying to Japan, and I wanted to stay and see more of northeast China.

I needed to extend my tourist visa whose 90 days were fast expiring.

On the train from Inner Mongolia, the countryside was nice – we could see glimpses of the Great Wall, part of which we’d already visited in Western China, and green, rolling hills.

In Beijing we checked in at a Home Inn on a tiny back alley which was being dug up and worked on – we had to balance across planks of wood each time we came and went.

My vague plans dashed

When you have no set plans, and are just bumming around for the experience and the visions, there are times when you get a little stuck.

This was one of those times for me. It turns out that renewing my tourist visa wouldn’t be possible, and I’d have to find some other country to head to.

I had two days to work this out.

My first thought was Mongolia – it was close, and I’ve always wanted to see it.

But I was running out of money and needed to step up my online work, and the internet in Mongolia has a bad reputation for being hard to find and unreliable.

Mongolia would have to wait. Now I needed a Plan B.

I then thought of Hong Kong, though it was far, far away in the south of China. Research yielded a 24-hour train that would take me straight there.

Fine – Hong Kong it is!

Now, time to enjoy Beijing

Although our hotel room was near Tiananmen Square, we only got as far as an ornate gate that lies south of it called Qianmen. It was nice and threw the shame of our missing out on Beijing in stark relief.

Like Klang, Malaysia or Zhuzhou, China, Beijing would become one of those places that you add to the list of places to return to and see properly because you had to miss them the first time.

My favorite thing in Beijing was a dinner we had at a little hole-in-the-wall place near our hotel: meat and vegetables on skewers with some spicy stuff added to them. They were extremely spicy, about as much as the jaw-dissolving stew we had in Chongqing.

I drank beer and Masayo drank tea but our mouths were flaming red by the end. Out of some sort of masochistic “do as the locals” spirit, however, we ate everything, even the end of the green peppers that we knew were the hottest.

On the way home we stopped at an outside vendor and bought some homemade-looking yogurt drinks that came in miniature crockpots. The vendor tried to explain something about the jars to us.

We drank them in the room and we returned the little jars the next day. I’m not sure that was the proper protocol, but we were doing our best. They either appreciated that we did that or were mystified. (I think people generally drink them on the spot.)

The end of China

On Day 90 Masayo and I trudged over to the airport and I saw her off. It was kind of sad – every time this happens, because of our loose, no-plan lifestyle, I’m never quite sure if I’ll ever see her again. So far, we have always met again and done some more traveling, but I could easily see this being the last time.

But as I rode the airport shuttle back into town, and then found my 24-hour overnight train for Hong Kong, I tempered my sense of loss and loneliness with the excitement of going to yet another new (and last-minute) destination: Hong Kong!

What’s the fastest last-minute decision you’ve had to make while traveling?

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