Summer Palace

What? No Great Wall trip today? No.. Not at all. We had a slightly change of plans.

Kaho and I got up at 5 o'clock this morning to go on a trip to the Great Wall. We would go with a bunch of people: two Brazilian girls, one German girl, one from Austria, one from Canada, a Chinese guy, the Japanese girl and me. We were supposed to go with a travel agency for only 27yuan. This would include the trip, entrance fee for the wall and a lunch. Kaho and I were a bit late, because the earliest train left the subwaystation at 5.38 and we needed to be at the university at 6.30. When we finally arrived there we went inside a little bus, to pick up four more people and go to a bigger bus. In the bigger bus there were a bunch of people and a Chinese women told Wang (our Chinese guy) to come with her. We didn't know why, but was very clear after that. He needed to tell us we need to pay an additional 40 yuan for the trip? We were getting the feeling that they were trying to rip us off, which we didn't liked at all.

So instead of going to the Great Wall, we decided to get out of the bus and we went into the MacDonalds. There most of us had their breakfast and I had a juice. We sat down to make a new plan for that day, which was quite easy. Wang is a native Beijing who lives close to the Summer Palace, so he suggested going there. And since he would be our personal tourguide for that day, we all thought it was a wonderful idea. The weather was great today, so it was not a problem at all to spent the whole day outside. We walked through the gardens and up the hills and around the lake. It was beautiful. We went in to the temple up the hill and had an amazing view. We made a lot of groups pictures, relaxed in the sun and just had a lot of fun. It was a great group to hang out with and the Summer Palace is just very impressive.

For lunch we went outside the Summer Palace and walked to a Japanse fastfood restaurant. During lunch we made plans for the rest of the afternoon. We still had a lot of time, although it felt already like a whole day had passed. Maybe this was because we got up at 5!

For the afternoon we decided to go to the World Trade Center of Beijing and try to get in one of the highest buildings. After this we would go to the Silk Market, have dinner and visit the Place as well.
So first the high building. Finding one was not a problem. Go up one was a bit more. Luckily one of the buildings had a bar on the 81th floor. So we went in to the fancy building, up the fancy elevator and we arrived on the very fancy 81th floor. We were a little bit out of place between all the business people smoking there cigars and stuff. But we are foreigners and nobody said anything to us, so we just walked around and enjoyed the view. We even went down to a certain floor were they had a spa and one of the girls actually went in and asked about the treatments they gave there :P We went down with another elevator that first brought us to the residence floor. We had another look at the view from that floor, but the people that worked there weren't too happy with us, so before they could say too much to us, we went down again. After this the two Brazalian girls had to leave us, unfortunately. They needed to get back to the university to pick up their things and book a hotel for the night.
The rest of us went to the Silk Market. Which is a crazy place. It is like a regular marketplace, but then with only Chinese people who can talk English and who call you and touch you to try to get you to buy something from them. At first I was amazed by this but it didn't took that long until I was annoyed by this. I bought a cute panda t-shirt for only 35yuan (she started the bargain at 200 something..). I was glad Marlene was there with me because I hate to bargain and I am really bad at it..
After a short time we were all quite done with walking around at the Silk Market and we decided it was time for food. Luckily there was a pizzaplace just around the corner, so we had pizza! Which was just normal pizza and thus really good. We sang 'Adelweisse' at our table (I think because Marlene, who is from Austria, did not know it) and we got a small applause for this. Wang could actually sing along as well (his major is German).
When the pizza was finished we went to visit the Place. This was recommended to me by someone from the AIESEC Beijing People, who we had dinner with a few weeks ago. And I am glad he did. The Place (it sounds really cool right?) is actually some kind of shopping center, but then with a really, really big as tv screen above the street! I think we stood there for a while, just watching the universe float by, a phoenix flying by and a big whale swimming by. It was really amazing and we were all tending to lie on the floor and just stay there.

Oh, one more thing I want to share with you. I learned this today while talking to Wang and I thought it was really funny and it explained a lot to me as well. We were talking about getting your driver's licenses and the differences between the Netherlands and China. The thing I learned that in China they have an extra skill you need to have before you can get your driver's licenses. In China you actually learn how to avoid pedestrians.