Beijing

So I finished the Great Wall a lot quicker than I thought and had the whole afternoon to walk around Beijing so I visited the Lama temple which was OK. I'm still templed out from my trip to Vietnam and Cambodia last Christmas. I was more surprised the amount of people praying as I didn't think religion was big in China.

I then went to a craft beer brewery/bar in the main hutong which was recommended by TripAdvisor. They did all kinds of beers and ales and the Chinese people working here spoke English and wanted some banter which I had not experienced in Beijing before. The beer was good especially after a morning of hiking. There was a guy sitting on his own on the table next to me. We ended up chatting random shit and sinking a few more beers. The whole time we didn't ask each others name until we left so I now know he's called Patrick from Australia.

This bar was a bit quirky, it had comic posters on the wall of some really crewed stories. But the weirdest thing was the "motherfucking lama".

So I went back to the hostel later and more drunk than I had originally planned and met my new dorm mates, Laura and Laura from England and Monika from Mexico. We chatted for a while, usual hostel introductions, hi what's your name, where do you come from, what are you doing here?

Now the plan for the day was to pack as I had to leave the hostel at 5 to catch my flight but because of the drinks and talking to my room mates it was quite late now but I eventually finished packing but I still had to work out how I got from the next airport to the Tiger Leaping Gorge I was going to hike. So I went to the bar to get on the WiFi and do some research and basically found out I had left it a bit late and getting the trains I needed wasn't going to happen especially during the national week holiday. So I decided to sack it off even though I had already bought my plane ticket. Such a waste but a life lesson that I should be more organised than I had been so far.

So I slept in and made an executive decision in the morning to book a flight to Guilin and found one due to depart in the afternoon so I bought it and without the confirmation travelled to the airport which in that time thankfully I had my booking confirmed.

My flight was delayed by 3 hours so I got to Guilin much later than planned but I was glad to be out of Beijing.Read more