Beijing - Part I

"Ladies and gentleman, we will be landing in Beijing shortly."

The words we'd been waiting to hear for over 60 hours, through 4 countries and atleast 17 airport restaurants. And we were ready, armed with pre-arranged visas, great big plans and even hotel reservations. We practically dove onto the tarmack and prepared to jump start the final leg of our journey. There was only one thing we forgot.

A freaking pen.

Before landing the stewardesses handed us the standard set of entry forms - customs declarations and the sort - and after realizing that our one and only pen had disappeared somewhere between Macau and Korea - we figured we'd fill them out quickly after we picked up our bags, no sweat.

Our plane landed at 11am. We checked into our hotel at 4:30. The hours inbetween were filled with hopeless begging: begging everyone in the airport for a pen and getting feircely denied or pointed toward random walls and bathroom doors by airport security (1.5 hours); begging taxi drivers to accept our fare even though we only had a bad english transliteration of our hotel's street (2 hours); begging for bus tickets from a subway ticket vendor and begging the bus driver to let us out the exit door that had suddenly switched to an enter door at our stop only (2 hours); and basically begging for forgiveness for all the wrong we had done that had made fate so eager to fuck with us (ongoing).

As a peace offering, karma did land us in a fantastic hotel, the Red Lantern Inn, a friendly, "home away from home" style place completely devoted to a traditional Chinese vibe and a 24 hour Jean Claude Van Damme bootleg movie showcase. Beijing impressed us immediately, its streets flooded with great food (highlight dishes including "The Temple Explodes Pepper Chicken") and a local flavor that falls somewhere between the gritty realness of Bangkok and the ultra-modernity of Hong Kong.

The next day took us to the famed Pearl Market, a place with such cheap clothes that a stewardess staying at our hotel was in for a 2-day trip "just to shop." The Pearl Market is a full-contact shopping experience, with the vendor's sales pitch typically going through this process:

1) Vendor reels you in with a line such as "Hey Boy! What you need?"

2) You make the mistake of turning around

3) Vendor promises very nice things at a very nice price, and demands you take a look

4) You take a look

5) Vendor sees your interest in a particular item, and offers you a price in Chinese Yeun (by punching numbers on a calculator)

6) You laugh, hit "Clear" on the calculator, and punch in 15% of the price

7) Vendor asks if you are joking

8) You say you are not

9) Vendor keys in another price, about 5% less than the original

10) You clear, up your price by a smidge

11) Vendor looks at the number and says "Dollars?!" (You hear 15 nearby vendors making the same joke to their respective customers)

12) You smile and begin to walk away

13) "Enter Sandman" starts blasting from the loudspeakers, and Vendor goes in for the closer. She grabs your wrist. Hard.

14) You try to get away, but its useless. Her grip reaches python strength, and you haggle until your hand goes numb, and you buy.

About 1,000 Yeun and several wrist bruises later, we met up with Eugene, last seen unconscious after losing a mouth-wrestling match with an ear of corn, and hit up a few foreign bars, including a place called Bed that made a big deal of its non-affiliation to the NYC Bed despite its striking similarity to the NYC Bed, and China Doll, a self-loving techno place that was voted "Best Bar," "Best Drinks," and "Best Place to Realize that You Still Can't Dance Even Though You're Halfway Around the World." A day of random street exploration followed, and after the requisite late-evening visit to Tian'men Square, we headed back to rest up for our 6:00am trip to the Great Wall.

Dan and Don Vs. The Great Wall - Coming Soon.