Welcome to China

So we've been in Beijing for a few days now, and absolutley loving it! One thing that's constantly flooring me is the size of this city - it's massive (I think lonely planet say that Beijing is equivalent in area to the entire country of Belgium). And it's incredibly busy, but not as crazy as I expected it would be.

Anyway, this post covers three action-packed days, so I'll try to keep it as brief as possible, but I'm sure I'll be rambling a bit...

The trip from the airport to central Beijing was fairly easy and uneventful (it was pretty cold so couldn't see much out of the iced-over windows in the bus, apart from lots of bright lights). But getting from the bus stop to our hostel (which, as it turns out, was directly across the street) became the first adventure - after being accosted straight-up by taxi drivers etc., we eventually agreed to let this guy with a 'taxi' take us - his taxi turned out to be some sort of hybrid motorised bicycle/rickshaw, and I have no idea where he took us, but after

a half-dozen backstreets, a few near barrel-rolls, and a very lost and confused looking driver, we ended up a lot further from the hostel than where we started. We eventually found it on foot, just before hyperthermia set in...

Since then we've been out exploring Beijing by foot (and occasionally jumping on the very efficient subway). We've explored quite a few temples, gardens and national parks, checked out the markets, sampled a lot of the local cuisine and ventured through a lot of the backstreets and hutongs - so we think we've done ok so far.

Won't give you too much of a blow-by-blow description, but here are a few highlights in our first few days here:

• The parks such as Jingshan (stunning views of the city across Tinanmen) and Beihai Park (stunning lakes - frozen at the moment - and gorgeous buildings and pathways - where we even had a go at some water calligraphy... apparently we wrote our names in Chinese script, but they could easily have been having a laugh and making us write "Aussie Wankers" or something!).
• Lama Temple - the most significant Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet. Such as vast temple with beautiful colours and incricate carvings in the buildings. It also houses an incredible buddha statue - 26 metres high and carved out of a single sandalwood tree (apparently it's in the Guinness Book of Records, and makes the 15 metre one I'm in the middle of carving look a little lame...).
• The night market - amazing food on offer here - anything you could ever want to eat (and probabaly a lot of things you'd never consider eating) are available on a stick. Apart from the fairly tame (pork, chicken, prawns etc.) you can also get into a bit of grasshopper, cicada, starfish, snake, frog and scorpion!!! It is amazing to see though. We stuck to dumplings, beef kebabs and pork spring rolls, but if we're here for long enough we may sample something a bit more exotic?? (Yeah right, who am I kidding!).
• Hutongs - we took a stroll through the Hutong district of Beijing today, which is basically a maze of narrow alleyways with simple dwellings and shops etc. that criss-cross through the main streets of Beijing. Quite a contrast to very modern, glitzy and built-up Beijing we've been experiencing so far.
• The food in general is pretty tasty - though ordering it has proven to be a challenge at various times - but a lot of pointing and gesturing normally gets you what you want (and sometimes what you don't - but it's always good to try something new).

A few things we've noticed:

• There is absolutely no respect for a queue here - if you can push your way to the front of at a ticket booth, food counter or train carriage door, then good on you - nobody (expect for tourists I suppose) seems to care.
• There is generally a lot of fascination with foreigners - hard to get used to the constant staring, but the occassional rock-star-like treatment is pretty sweet (such as getting stopped by a group of giggling Chinese tourists so they could have their photos taken with us in front of Tianenmen...)
• Certainly not as many western tourists here as I imagined there would be - maybe it's just a seasonal thing though. It is pretty cold here, definitely not high season, evident with places such as Tinanmen Square being a lot emptier than pics I've seen - so it became quite an event for us spotting another westerner out on the road!
• There is construction everywhere - no doubt preperation for the '08 Olympics - the place is undergoing quite a facelift.
• People tend to spit a lot (though I had been warned about this, it still takes a bit of getting used to).
• English is definitely not a language they're comfortable with here - some of the English translations of Chinese signs are absolutely hilarious!

So our feet are tired and sore, but we're having a blast exploring this incredible city. Our Intrepid Tour starts tonight, so hopefully we'll touch on a bit more of Beijing before we head off to the great wall on Wednesday.

We've taken stacks of pictures, so hopefully I can get a few posted on here at some stage.

Hope everyone back home is well (and hope the Hawks didn't lose by too much to the Tigers...).