Follow Ben Around The World

Friday November 7th- 2nd day Hong Kong/Beijing I put together a group of 19 students and organized a camping trip on the great wall. We are flying out of Shenzhen airport on the China mainland because flying out of Hong Kong was technically an international flight and therefore more expensive. There are a few ways to get to Shenzhen but we decided to take the train to the end of the line entering China and then take a shuttle to the airport. The plan was to meet in Tymitz Square on the boat at 6am and leave no later than 6:15. I was impressed everybody was there on time. The subway station was only a short walk away from the ship. By luck it turned out to be the correct line we needed to ride all the way to China and we didn't have to transfer lines at all. We were on the train by 6:45 and it was about an hour ride to the Lo Wu station. At the station we had to go through Hong Kong customs for leaving, and enter Chinese customs. It went pretty fast and we didn't have any trouble. The next problem was finding the shuttle to the airport. Nobody spoke English and we had a hard time finding it. There were not enough seats on the first shuttle so we split the group half and half. It was another hour ride to the airport and we got there with about 20 minutes to spare before they closed the ticket gate. Although it was stressful we finally made it and got onto our flight to Beijing. I was most worried about that part of the trip because it was all riding on my planning and missing the flight would have totally screwed up our plans. We landed in Beijing and it was 50 degrees! The last time we were cold was in South Africa so it was a treat to get out of the tropics of Southeast Asia and into cooler weather. Ari and Lacey had a friend from Ithaca that was studying abroad in Beijing meet us at the airport. We talked with him for a little and he helped us get taxi's to Tiananmen Square. Once again we were battling the language barrier. Of course we got to the square no problem but it was huge and there were tons of people! My taxi waited in front of the gates to the Forbidden City hoping others would do the same. We got there around 3:15pm and all but one of the taxi's found us by 4pm. I thought the city closed at 5 so we decided to go in and hope they met us inside because we had waited for 45 minutes. The actual city closed at 3:30 but we were able to go through a series of gates leading up to it and we saw it from the outside. It was really disappointing and frustrating because online travel guides told us it closed at 5. We went through an art exhibit that had numerous paintings from Beijing University students and they loved talking in English to us. A few people bought some paintings but they were all water color and looked like prints so I didn't get one. It was really cold out now so we bought some bomber hats that had the communist red star on them and all of the Chinese people around us got a kick out of a group of white guys were communist hats. Some even wanted pictures with us. I forgot the address to the hostel we were going to stay at back at the ship. I knew it was only a 10 minute walk from Tiananmen square so we started walking in the direction we thought it was. One thing we learned is that hostels are always tucked away in weird locations. It took us a while to find it and one girl in the group who spoke Korean and I got in a little rickshaw type taxi whose driver knew where it was. We were then going to walk back and grab the group. After going through a bunch of weird alleys and torn up streets we found this nice hostel which seemed out of place. We started walking back to get the group and they had found their way and were almost there. They even found the four people that didn't meet us at the Forbidden city and they had just been walking around for hours. It was weird how the other 16 people knew to meet at the gates and they didn't so I did not feel bad that they had just been walking around. So we checked into the hostel which apparently didn't know we were coming even though I emailed them and told them we were, luckily they had room still. The street the hostel was on looked like a movie set and can't be described without pictures. But there were no cars on it and it was a series of little shops and restaurants. A few girls and I got a traditional Chinese dinner where they serve it to you family style and the table turns so you can pass the food that way. Everyone else went to a western restaurant. Our dinner was good though, my favorite was the sweet and sour pork. I don't like how a lot of the meats come with bones in them. You are not supposed to use your hands to eat so picking meat off of bones with chopsticks is quite a challenge. After dinner we met up with other people and a few guys and I got some beers and were invited into a shoe shop to drink with two Chinese guys. It was a tiny shop along the main street where you could sit and watch everyone go by. It was really funny though because they didn't speak any English but a tourist shop across from them had a translator on the computer so we would run across and type something in and then come back. It was fun trying to communicate with them. Those guys were supposed to take us to karaoke but the place was closed so they took us to a club instead. They didn't go in with us and we were really tired so we didn't stay long. It was crazy with loud music and lots of dancing. There were strobe lights and fog machines. It was exactly what we pictured it would be haha. We wondered our way back to the hostel which was more difficult without guys showing us the way. It was a stressful and long first day in Beijing but we are glad we finally got here and are all set to leave on our camping trip tomorrow to the great wall!