When Dan, Derek and Ryan came to visit Weifang, honestly, Greg and I weren’t quite sure what we would show them or what would be exciting to do. All three of their personalities are very different.
We were only staying in Weifang for about one week before heading off on travels. During the week the guys were able to see our town of Fangzi. We ate at the BGR (countless times), we went for three massages–each one including new and funny stories, they were introduced to a few Chinese friends as well as most of the foreign teachers, we played “Cocaine”, we walked around exploring parts of the city, we went to markets, we went to Mbox and two new bars (Muse and new SoHo– old Soho is closed!) and mostly just caught up. We still needed to plan the next leg of our time together; Beijing, Xi’an, Beijing again, Thailand.
Also, I’m so impressed at how quickly the three guys got over their jetlag. Crazy fast. And, Derek and Ryan even picked up some of the language in a short time!
I think, speaking for Greg and myself, the week with our friends in our new town was more than a little a lot welcome. We appreciate it so so SO much!!
On Sat Jan 21st we left Weifang for Beijing. The night before Dan, Derek, Ryan and myself had drank (Ryan not so much), leaving us feeling not so wonderful.. The train ride was pretty nice though with no complications. We got to Beijing after a four hour ride. The five of us, feeling cheap, and still hostile towards Beijing after our last experience with the place were looking for a feasible way of getting around.
Thank you Beijing subway system.
The Beijing Subway is the most immaculately run mode of transportation. For the low price of 2 yuan you can ride the subway, with an many connections as you need. It’s clean, safe, and quite reliable.
We found that we could take the subway from the Beijing South station right to Yonghegong street stop next to Lama Temple, which just so happened to be about a 500m walk from our first hostel.
When we arrived we walked the wrong way, and were confused which meant we missed the tiny side street leading to our hostel. We stopped in a convenient store (difference from Weifang #1…) and were lucky to meet a few expats (difference #2…) who spoke English directing us in the right direction. Beijing is fairly touristy, so at times I felt I was experiencing reverse culture shock. So many white people! So much English!
We all loved our hostel and would recommend it to anyone traveling to Beijing (hint hint, Gabby and Alanna). It’s called 1 Hai Inn or also called the Candy Inn. The girl at the front desks name is Roxie and she speaks incredible English. Oh, also they serve American breakfast… with bacon. Greg and I lucked out during our time here and managed to get rooms with just us in the them. Dan, Derek and Ryan shared a room with a guy named Max traveling around by himself, from Quebec and three British girl currently attending University in Shanghai.
Our first night was fairly low key, unintentionally. After accepting our free beer upon arrival we went to eat. We found a place across the street from the Lama Temple to eat. It was alright, no BGR, but pretty good. We returned to the Candy Inn and were trying to figure out our plan for the night… we knew that we wanted to go out. We had heard that if you get into a taxi and say “Sanlitun” street you will be taken to the bar street. So, we tried this. And, were a little mistaken. Everything was crazy expensive! Foreigners were everywhere. I quickly realized that in Beijing foreigners are nothing special like in Weifang, and all prices are inflated. When we finally settled on a bar, after a long time of searching, we go in and sit down only to find out that just to sit in the booth will cost us 500 yuan. We could stand… but just left. The majority of the bars were pretty deserted. Apparently there is a bar street… with a bar called “Sanlitun”. We just weren’t there.
We headed back to the hostel, giving up on our night out, ate some noodles and drank some beer. We met a couple guys from Alberta. One of them named Andy is an Engineer who has been living in China looking for work. His buddy Steven came over to see him. They were nice guys. Mostly just exchanged China stories with Andy and Chinese slang we’ve learned. We took a shot of Bai Jiu and headed to bed.
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