Jen & Dan Summer Tour 2008

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Heading south

We finish most of our journey in China tomorrow, heading on to Vietnam. We fly down through Guangzhou and have about an 11 hour layover so we will get to see that city (in the south of China) for a few hours. From there we fly into Hanoi and board a boat for a cruise around Ha Long bay for a night. We are heading to Ho Chi Min City via train, though we will make up our itinerary as we go. I am not sure how much access we will have to the Internet at that time.

We got to experience something very interesting last night: Beijing live music. First, we went to an acrobatic show, something like Cirque Du Soliel. I didn’t know that people could fly and or bend in such ways. Then we found a restaurant with California wine on the menu (from the Rutherford valley no less). We figured that we should support U.S. exports so we had two bottles. Then we proceeded to go the main drag for nightlife where we were surprised to find that you could bargain for the price of beer with the doorman before entering an establishment! Luckily for them that we were a little off our negotiating game due to the haze of the wine or else they probably would have ended up paying us to drink there given Jen's skill. At each bar we found that live entertainment consists of a guitarist, a guy playing the keyboard and a cute girl doing interpretative dancing to the song lyrics with absolutely no expression on her face. Then, on the next song, the band would hit a button and sing obvious karaoke while playing air guitar, all while the same girl would sit on the stand on the stage with a bored look on her face. I didn’t understand it yet was fascinated.


Here is a picture of the above mentioned dancer. Notice how she is selling the drama of the ballad being belted by the singer!




This is another shot of the Great Wall where we saw it.



These lilies were huge, some standing as much as six feet in the air. There were many gardens and lakes at the summer resort, which was only open to the ruling family until about 50 years ago. It's good to be the king, or emperor, or whatever the big cheese is called.




Here is a shot of the very exotic haze which gives Beijing a Paris like feel of romanticism and intrigue. Actually, it is smog which sets on your skin like day old sunscreen and doesn't like to come off. In the background you can see a hill with a temple on top. This was a man made hill that was constructed of the dirt that came from the moat dug around the Forbidden City. This doesn't give the best perspective, but up close it is pretty impressive to think that it was built with wheelbarrows.
Here is one of the 3 million beautiful buildings that make up the Forbidden City.








This lion guards the right hand side of one of the doors to a separate part of the city. There is a similar one on the other side, but this is the male. You can tell because it has it's paw on a globe (representing the world) to show the obvious male dominance of the Emperor. I bet he could have gotten an even better deal on scarfs than we did.

Here we are in Tianamen Square. You can see a picture of Chairman Mao behind us. We refer to him as "Sir" as well.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home