i miss that!!!
it's a christmas holiday and i'm here at work,running shows but it's almost over pretty soon.been swallowing festive chocolates and crackers and last nite movie marathon at home drove me rather lethargic today,already i'm preparing myself for another round tonite,can't wait!
been raining again but my God it's so warm here in the console booth!!
We never thought that we would enjoy ourselves so much,after much research on the net & assistance by fellow friends who either lived there or been there before,and also those were worried for our safety & wellbeing during our stay there,we were quite unsure and were a bit confused actually,until the plane touchdown at dawn,about 7800 miles away from home,in a foreign soil,we finally land our feet on Beijing.
The experience that we had were beyond words-totally amazing folks-and the impression that we had on China before were all wrong & negative-they are extremely nice & friendly,despite the language barrier,they were always quick to assist and show us directions with gestures and even sketches of routes on pieces of paper.for two weeks in China,our stay was colourful and wonderful with the adventures that we went through.cold,it was
-7degrees in Beijing,triple layered and armed with beanies and mittens,we were quite snuggly comfortable and warm,but when the sun disappears and the wind started blowing,the weather was evil to us,it was dark by 4.30pm and by 8pm,non 'touristy areas' will be rather deserted,but that didn't stopped us,we travelled by foot in the radius of about 5km around our hotel,which situated almost central to the attractions in Beijing,we took the train,met strangers turned friends communicating using our bad mandarin and sign languages.
we had seen the oldest mosque in Beijing,had the opportunity for a solah jumaah with the folks there,visited tiananmen square,the forbidden city,the ming tombs,the great wall of china,and several other places.the streets were quite clean,if to compare to many cities around our region,well paved and although not quite what we were looking forward to see-there were so many shopping centres-Emporio Armani,Zara,Uniqlo,Vans stores were almost everywhere.way before we arrived there,we were actually looking forward to the 'old china' but sad all were almost gone for new developments,modern businesses with the world actually drove them to scrape the old shophouses for hi tech buildings,and i must add that they are far advanced forward actually.the only remnants of maoism are the historical monuments & souvenirs.
Food-oh yes,being muslims,and especially we've grown up in a household with spices the entire life-we had a tough time finding a proper restaurant or food joint which match our taste.there are many muslim restaurants around,and street hawkers from Xinjiang who were on wheels and they were almost everywhere but just not enticing enough for us,though we did tried the grilled lamb meat and dough & it tasted a bit off for me.so the entire stay our diet we feasted on cup noodles,maggi instant noodles which we packed along,there we ate fish fillet,pancakes,tuna pizza and gobbled down crackers,chocolates & all that.
fortunately we have free internet access in the hotels that we checked into but youtube,blogs and facebook sites are all barred across the country.
someday if there's opportunity again,we'll might return there..
