rants: Beijing Day 4/5: Jacco Tours

Well, the posts stopped on Day 4 in China due to Google censorship and my complete inability to get onto blogger. We transferred hotels almost every night once we joined the tour and to my surprise, many of the hotels didn't have free interwebs (which didn't really matter since facebook and youtube were inaccessible). So anyways, I'll backtrack to Sunday July 7th and continue on - luckily I kept records throughout the trip and I wrote blog posts on a word doc so I won't forget too much xD.

Sunday
On Sunday we left our awesome hotel downtown and joined up with Jacco Tours group consisting of 37 people from Toronto, Australia and New York. The hotel was super out of the way - although closer to the highway which is good for tour purposes. I’ve got to say, the hotel here is super nice as well; it’s considered a resort with a little shopping plaza, five restaurants and even a barber shop. Unfortunately the bowling alley was closed when we got here, and the gym as well as the pool was taken over by little children. We decided to go out to a massive shopping mall in the evening before calling it a day (6am wake up call tomorrow -.-).

Monday
So today was a crazy day. The group started at 6am and headed down for breakfast before hopping on the bus. Our tour guide is a very energetic woman, she definitely knows what she’s doing, and knows her history down to the tee. Beijing traffic is crazy, fun fact: on certain days of the week, cars with a license plate that end in a certain number aren’t allowed on the road – so today it was the number 3 and 8. To get a car in general, you need a license plate which is done by lottery in Beijing. In Shanghai only the wealthy can afford a license plate, if I remember correctly it cost about 16 000 CA for the plate alone! Anyways, today we headed down to Tiananmen Square followed by the forbidden city. The two places alone took over two hours, and with the crazy crowds it was a miracle the group didn’t get totally lost! Then we headed down to the Beijing Zoo where we saw the Pandas! We were only there for half an hour before we jetted over to Olympic Park and saw the Bird’s Nest before once again heading off to the older parts of the city. We had a rickshaw ride through an area called the Hutong where the houses have not been touched by development yet. Finally the day ended with a Kung Fu show which was....interesting, it was impressive acrobatics although I can’t help thinking every single stereotype/scene in a western kung fu movie was covered in the show (which was geared towards western tourists). I skipped out the meal parts of the day, but obviously food was consumed etc. The food is quite good, it’s interesting trying the different dishes, plus each region has its specialty – in Beijing its Peking Duck. And before I forget, the weather was perfect today, it was raining and overcast so it was the first day in Beijing where I didn’t sweat to death!