Day 1: Beijing

After work on Friday I went to bed early and forced myself to sleep for five hours before waking up and meeting my ride to the airport at 2am. I was at the airport before 3am and spent the next five hours waiting for my flight.

When the currency counter opened, I went to exchange my NT dollars for Renminbi, but I was informed "No China!"

A quick two hour flight later and I was at the airport in Macau. I exchanged my money into RMB there.



I had a two hour layover. From Macau I flew to Beijing, which took about three hours. I then caught a shuttle bus to Xidan. That took over an hour, thanks to the wonderful traffic in Beijing.

I approached a man who I thought was a taxi driver and showed him where my hostel was. He led me to a rickshaw. What the hell, I thought. In case he was planning on harvesting my organs, I thought about the best way for me to escape: jumping through the 'window' at the back. (Knapsack, then body).

Made it to my hostel, organs intact. I was overcharged but didn't mind because I had to be at the hostel by a certain time and it was getting late.


The hostel is part of a hutong and was very clean and mellow. My room was toasty warm and had a comfy bed. I was staying in a four-bed dorm with two roommates. That night we went to a western bar that had live music and male and female pole dancing. The bar was on a street where there were over a dozen other bars offering almost exactly the same things.


Not the most exciting place. From there we took a cab to the nightclub Vics.




By the end of the night I was all kinds of tired.