Civilisation... Sort of.

18/08/13

 Our day off finally arrived and after some serious coaxing Rory managed to get me up and ready for another adventure – training really takes it out of you and I was cosy! Once I was back in the land of the living we Googled where to eat in Beijing, hopped on the subway and headed downtown. We made a beeline for an American BBQ restaurant and after ordering in English (which was a change from pointing and smiling) we were given knives and forks and then came the fun part – stuffing ourselves with western food! It was our most expensive meal to date at around £20 but it was worth it for a little normalcy!

 

The westerner part of the city

 As we were pretty tired from a long week of training we dandered around the area and got a good look at the CCTV building. When Rory told me where we were going I thought it was going to be something out of the Big Brother House/1984 but CCTV actually stands for China Central Television. Either way it was pretty impressive and worth a look. 

 We then headed to the Saniltun Village area – we had a very small map of the area and as this part of Beijing is famous for housing embassies from around the world we knew we were in the right place. However, we saw some sort of diversion on the road we thought we were meant to take – turns out we weren’t heading towards the shopping area of Saniltun, rather we were walking around the Soldiers Hospital. No joke, we kept walking past all these building with “x-ray/cardiology/optometry” signposts. After a very long diversion we managed to escape the hospital and find the bar street which was cool and right beside another mall! 

The dodgy hospital diversion

Another huge mall

 China is completely full of malls and they are full of American shops and eateries. I actually quite like it – Rory and I were saying how you could be anywhere in the world when you’re somewhere like this. It feels like America when you’re walking around a shopping centre, then you go to the bathroom and the smell reminds you that you’re still chillin’ in China!

On the way home we stopped at a western supermarket – the nicey section was disappointing but I did buy some long life milk for cereal. Apparently they’re not that in to milk over here, I think they’re all lactose intolerant, so trying the long life stuff will be an experience!