I'm here and here is Beijing hotel. Its right in the centre of the city and its quite cool here (not by temperature but by state of things).
It took me freaking 12 hours (-4 due to time change) to get into this country. And hell, are these people slow! In airport at least. 40 min to get us a landing pad to the plane? Give me a break! But then it takes them yet an hour more to give you your visa. Yes a whole hour to write 3 little pieces of paper and glue photos to em. Then you have to wait 15 min for a special train that takes you to your luggage (!). I felt myself a goddamn Gordon Freeman riding on that slow train to the
But then the good bit starts - the hotel. Its great: new building with all the clean and fresh stuff, room with a 2-people bed in 1-person room, and a free 40 channels of TV to go with it. Most channels are chinese tho but there s HBO with movies in english with subtitles. I ve already watched a nice one - "Born Free - New Adventure" - a surprisingly good and kind story about 2 young people in Africa taking care of a lioness together. How the hell did I have time to watch a movie, you may ask? Well thats because I adapted better than usually to the time change. I mean I got asleep at 2.30 yesterday and woke up full of energy without my phone signal at 6 today. So obviously I had some time before breakfast.
Now the thing that I can't understand yet - the surrounding shops. I counted at least 11 massage houses in a km territory around our hotel. Just why?
I have 3 possible explanations:
1) Chinese people are really, really fond of massage.
2) Its some sort of massage street.
3) Some (if not all) of these massage houses are actually "massage" houses.
There is also one thing in favor of 3rd option - besides the massage houses there are 3 sex shops around.
And as a conclusion I d like to add that these people are indeed short - I'm feelin myself a giant here.
Thats Lett out. I ll try to keep you updated. Have fun!