Day 4 Thursday, October 24

This morning we had some free time to ourselves and this gave us the opportunity to explore the main shopping district of Beijing.  The centre stores were Apple, H&M, Chanel, Cartier, Hermes and every other high end store you can think of.  One thing we have learned in our four days is China's economy is booming and not poor, in fact the opposite, more Mercedes, BMW, Audi etc are on the road here.

At 12noon we are off to one of the Hutong Neighbourhoods, so what is a Hutong area anyway, it was how Beijing looked 70 years ago, these are like alleys with homes and shops, compact and rustic, as most of the homes do not have inside plumbing, so there are public toilets and showers every 100 feet and they are new and reasonable clean.  I should also mentioned that we travel through the Hutong on a three wheel pedal-cab, and the driver had to be over 70, thankfully the streets are flat.  We had lunch in someone home, and that was a pleasant experience.   

It is very important to realize that people in China are the most friendly I have ever come cross, and Canada could learn some manners from the Chinese.

After lunch it was off to the world famous Beijing Zoo and a chance to see Panda Bears, now these guy eat about 100kg of fresh (flown in by plane) bamboo, and are a bit messes when it comes to going  to the bathroom, so hence may not be a welcome addition to the Turtle Lodge.  There was also a Panda Bear couple in the middle to some heavy duty love making, and someone with a stop watch was taking time sample of each move and noting all the details in Chinese characters.  Lets hope this couple were successful, looked like a long process, but the female was enjoying it from one I could see anyway.

Panda's eat a lot of Bamboo, which is flown in from Northern China

I think every trip needs some Panada Sex - Live from Beijing !!

After all this intense love making at the zoo it was off to the Temple of Heaven which was used by the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasty, again the pictures will tell a better story then words.

Tonight we will board the 44 hour train from Beijing to Lhasa (or Lasa) in Tibet, this line was opened in 2006, and is the highest rail line in the world and reaches a point 5,046m high.  We depart at 8:00pm be arrive at the station at 5pm, always remember that there are 1.3billion people in China and lets say 50% want to take the train, do the math!  We have a sleeper car with four bunks, so we do not know who the other 2 people will be, more than likely they will be Chinese and not westerners.

As most things in China, this train departs on time and the ticketing is efficient and includes passport review etc..  To our surprise the other couple (David and Robin), both from Beijing and are heading to Lasa for a new job, Robin works for China News Network, and will be assigned to the Lasa Bureau for one year.  There english is very good and we hit it off the first night, mind you they were about 27 years old and had been married for about 10 months.  We talked a lot over the next 44 hours and I am sure that one day they will come to Canada and we will visit some more.