Asian Adventure_China

Part 1: Beijing, China Well, Beijing was strange. Eventful to say the very least. We arrived there early afternoon and it took us almost 2 hours to get through China's intense security. They check your temperature when you are walking through customs. odd. Finally we were on the metro systems Kate, Hannah, and I split off from the others and started our adventure. We navigated to Tiananmen Square. It was amazing. Walking in to the square gave me chills, just thinking about what had happened 20 years ago. And that protest made so much sense, China is beyond communism. It was just so gray, very had to explain but if you imagine the worst possible communist country, there it is. While we were in the square we went through to the Forbidden City, breathtaking, everything (in the square) was painted red and gold. We were starting to wander around when all of the sudden the guards started screaming in Chinese, obviously we didn’t understand so we ignored it (woopsies). well they were yelling at everyone to leave the square so we exited. When we were outside in front of the Mao portrait about 50 people asked to take pictures of us, we were basically the only westerners in site. At one point people started lining up towards the exit so we joined in, about 30 guards were marching out of Tiananmen square and when they came right in front of us they halted quickly, pivoted, and started pushing everyone. it was crazy, and scary. Kate and I started running and screaming but laughing at the same time because i could never imagine people in the United States doing this, ever. After this we met up with everyone again and went to go get dinner, which cost about 50 euro for 12 people and we all got about 3 courses. the food was not what i expected at all but it was still very good After the dinner we separated again and I went to this area that looks exactly like how we imagine China. Red with lanterns hanging everywhere it was amazing. We shopped around and got starbucks and then headed towards the hotel. It cost us less than 10 euro for almost an hour cab ride, it was ridiculous and i was so shocked at how cheap everything was. Apparently everything smelled bad in Beijing, I had a cold so I couldn’t really smell anything ridiculous. Overall the experience in the actual China was interesting. Asia is so different than anything I had ever expected. So far Ive had so much fun and when I get the time I will write about Taipei and then Bangkok.