Last day in Beijing

Beijing main train station

So today I was pretty much on my own the whole time... I didn't have anything specific planned. So this morning I just took one of the buses to the end of the line to see if I could get lost and still bring myself back to the center of town. I was successful in both attempts.

Along the way I wandered into this shop that was probably about the size of a media markt, but it was only for cell phones and for cell phone accessories. I think it was like the supply area for all the cell phone vendors or something. There was so much action going on in that place; I have never seen anything like that before. Just thousands and thousands of cell phones, cell phone batteries, headsets, cards, all that stuff. It was pretty unreal. And all the people shouting and unpackaging phones, repacking phones; it was amazing.

I ate some really interesting meat at lunch time. Not sure what it was; looked kind of like chicken, kind of like pork, kind of like duck. Had the texture of menudo. I also ate some jiaozi... 21 kuai for the whole meal. Tummy still okay.

In the afternoon, I went to a Buddhist temple on the north side of town where they have an 18-meter high sandlewood buddha statue. Also pretty amazing. Unfortunately not easy to photograph though due to poor lighting conditions.

I like the part of town that we're staying in, but I feel like we get ripped off here a little bit. The prices at the restaurants are not that much lower than those in Europe... for dinner tonight we paid 151 kuai for 4 bottle of beer, two bowls of rice, a pork dish, a tofu dish and a chicken dish. That's about 17-18 Euros for a decent sized but not huge meal. I guess it would have been more like 35 euros in Germany, but the quality of the restaurant might have been better too.

hm... yummy :)

Or would you rather have Kentucky Fried Chicken? :)