Beijing...Day 3

We woke up extra early to get a head start on finding the public transportation tour bus for the Great Wall. First, we had breakfast at the restaurant where were ate dinner the Monday night. We had rice/pumpkin porridge, steamed meat buns, and some fried bread. In the middle of the meal Kisha said, “You smell the ammonia smell in the bread? That’s a chemical that is said to cause Alzheimer’s when eaten over a long period of time.” ACK!!! Needless to say, that was my last bite of it. Then, we headed to the big bus depot. Unfortunately, the bus appeared to be nonexistent and or course the other tours that were out there refused to tell us/didn’t know about the bus we were looking for. In our haste to get out there, one of use forgot to put on deodorant so we headed across the street to a store to find some. While there, we bought some snacks to bring back to our respective offices as gifts. With her fabulous Chinese language skills, Kisha overheard some derogatory things being said about us by the clerks so she called one of them a “Stank *****” in Chinese…ironic because we were looking for deodorant!!! This was also the same store that she had been to about a year ago, where she ended up smacking the snot out of some guy who was all in her face. I love that girl…a New Yorker to the bone! It’s so unfortunate that people assume you don’t understand them because you’re a foreigner….especially in a place where there are so many foreigners who speak the language. This was only the beginning of the fun with Kisha and her impeccable Chinese ability!!! She told us the story of when she lost her passport because it had flown out of the window of a moving bus while she was beating up some Chinese guy who kept taking pictures of her after she changed seats and told him to stop several times. And there’s the time when she had to go to the police station and pay a fine for whacking some woman with an umbrella while waiting for the elevator in her apartment building.

Next, we went to a youth hostel to check their store for some deodorant. It was another place where we should have stayed! Our deo search was futile yet again, but we did find a tour to the Great Wall. Unfortunately, it made three other stops (Jade factory, some Chinese Medicine center, and the Ming tombs), but it was reasonably priced and the woman said the bus would pick us up at our hotel at 8 am. After booking our tour, we headed back over to Tiananmen Square so that we could see the Forbidden City. Despite the fact that much of it was under construction for preservation purposes, it was amazing. It would have been better had there not been a million bazillion people there. I had to give the evil eye to a couple of folks who thought it was a good idea to step in a little too close to get a better look at me. Someone grabbed Michelle’s hair and she thought it was one of us. So, needless to say she was upset about that. Kisha’s umbrella served as a shield from unwanted camera shots. And lest we not forget the forbidden bathroom...yes, that's it to the left!

We ate in the area called Wangfujing. The sign at the restaurant said something in Chinese and “Muslim Restaurant.” We had a Mongolian hot pot and ironically enough we had shrimp. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought shrimp were not Halal! After our early dinner, we headed across the street to the Olympic store. Once again, Kisha overheard some mean stuff being said about black folks by some of the clerks so she tripped one of them. When the girl asked her why she did it, she told them it was because they were talking about her. The clerk said something to the effect of, “Well, you’re a different kind of person here.” So, Kisha told her that she was “Still a person regardless.”

On the way to the train station, the cab driver almost hit a man who was crossing the street while trying to look at us in the cab...SCARY and kinda funny at the same time. We ate ramien (ramen) at the train station after Kisha bought her return ticket and almost got robbed by two guys who had apparently been scheming on her. Before dinner, she bought a chicken foot to snack on but had the nerve to change her order because she said that the beef looked two white for beef!!! HAHAHAHA! We went back to the hotel to drop off our stuff, and then we searched for places to get a massage. We stumbled upon a tea house so we stopped for some Jasmine tea. It was really good. However, the tea cost about $17 and the small bowl of peanuts cost about $25…WAIT A MINUTE…but we let it go and headed out to continue our massage search. At the first place we found, we were greeted by a man wearing a shirt and tie. He had a strange smirk and said that there weren’t any showers for woman but he could arrange a room for us to get a massage. After looking around while he was telling this to Kisha in Chinese, we realized that there were no women there…RED FLAG!!! Apparently, this was not just a spa…ehem! So, we scurried out. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped to take pictures outside of an Irish pub called Durty Nellie’s. The next place we found was fairly nice and the staff greeted us in English with wide welcoming smiles. We went to a room with four chairs and four ladies came in to give our weary muscles quite the work out. Massages and reflexology HURT! But boy did we feel much better/half-asleep after the 80 minutes…for about $11!!!